A Lively, Uneven Opening at Bowl

By no standards, not even those of the Hollywood Bowl, is the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s summer season of classical concerts, which began Tuesday night, imaginative. Only one work all summer is by a living composer (and a jazz composer, Wynton Marsalis, at that), and it is still nine weeks away. The only pieces written during the lifetime of even the oldest orchestra members, found in the 22 classical programs, are two famous mid-’50s Broadway scores by Leonard Bernstein, Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony (1953) and, perhaps, Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto (1940) or even “Concierto de Aranjuez” by Rodrigo (1939). And the list doesn’t get that much longer when you add pieces written within the lifetime of the players’ teachers!

With the message that classical music is not--at least when intended for a large, casual public--a living art, the challenge for the orchestra will be to keep its regular museum visits on Tuesday and Thursday nights (and a couple of Saturdays) lively. Routine will inevitably set in. But the good news Tuesday was that the orchestra is starting out fresh.

You can tell a lot about how a Bowl concert will turn out by the playing of the National Anthem, and this time it was splendid. The conductor, Emmanuel Krivine, faced the audience, smiled engagingly and asked for (and got) joyous singing from all. A large, festive arch of colored balloons (biodegradable, we were later assured) framed the shell, and the top row burst free into the air at the end. “The land of the free” had a vivid symbol, and a mood for music was wonderfully created.

It wonderfully continued with “An American in Paris.” Gershwin’s fond symphonic poem of tourism has, of course, its own interesting Bowl symbolism. Its traffic sounds, outdoor cafe life and foreign music (Gershwin, Bernstein and Marsalis are the summer’s only American composers) is all part of the Bowl experience. “At the conclusion, the street noises and French atmosphere are triumphant,” Gershwin wrote of his score.

Triumphantly conducted by a Parisian in America, that is exactly what happened. Krivine asked for something less jazzy than an American might and more Ravel-ian. Thus the sounds of honking horns, the bluesy tunes and hot rhythms became part of a fluid, subtly colored and fluidly phrased whole, not urban raw but Parisian romantic, not the wonder of the city but the comfortable celebration and acceptance of it. The Philharmonic responded with breezy, comfortable playing, as if to say, yes, we know there will be distractions (and thoughtless pilots and car alarms responded throughout as if on cue) but it’s just life.

Real life invaded the Bowl in other ways as well. Opera star Denyce Graves was to have sung excerpts from “Carmen” and Gershwin songs, but illness forced a cancellation and a change in the program. Mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer maintained the Gershwin but replaced “Carmen” with Ravel’s orchestral songs, “Sheherazade.” Gershwin-Bizet symmetry was lost (the program ended with selections from Bizet’s incidental music to “L’Arlesienne”), but the evening became more interesting with Ravel’s sultry songs.

Mentzer, another excellent young mezzo-soprano in what is now a very crowded field, brought a full, rich expressivity to the Ravel. If she was not exactly smoldering, the satisfying body of her sound produced just the right sense of substance and opulence necessary for these three songs to the exotically decadent fin de siecle French texts of Tristan Klingsor. Krivine likewise demonstrated an easy, liquid grace in the sensuous orchestral accompaniments. Sadly lacking for the audience, however, were the texts themselves. The program books now cost a dollar yet no longer provide the basics.

Texts, of course, were hardly needed for the three Gershwin songs Mentzer selected--”Love Walked In,” “Our Love Is Here to Stay” and “Summertime”--but they wouldn’t have hurt. Some opera singers do well in scaling down to popular music; Mentzer, though, was not among them Tuesday, her operatic grandeur adding a formal gloss that only “Summertime” could bear.

For the “L’Arlesienne” selections, Krivine was a Frenchman in France. Bizet’s popular, descriptive pieces are often bonbon material, and it can be as dangerous to make them symphonic as it is to make Gershwin’s songs operatic. Krivine, however, found the right balance between sprightly animation and pleasant relaxation. The orchestra sounded alive and committed; the saxophone solos had the sweetness of a perfect dessert.

Now, let us hope that the orchestra, and its guests, can remain as alert and as involved as the summer continues.