Philharmonic’s High-Spirited Evening of Mozart, More

Returning to the podium of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, pianist and conductor Christian Zacharias led the second-week’s installment in the brief More Than Mozart Festival.

His unhackneyed program, during which he played two Mozart concertos, offered four handsome works from the Classical era.

The German conductor and a temporarily reduced orchestra lavished an abundance of care and affection on Haydn’s Symphony No. 80, and the results filled the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with the composer’s inventive musicality.

The temperamental opening movement changes modes, tempos, even keys, with surprising rapidity, and Haydn’s irrepressible zest colored the finale wherein, unexpectedly, conductor Zacharias surprised his audience by taking the final repeat, thus humorously squelching the early clappers.

The rest of the evening was also high-spirited. It began with the sober but charming Symphony in C minor by German composer Joseph Martin Kraus, an almost exact contemporary (1756-92) of Mozart, practically forgotten except in Sweden, where he thrived in his prime.

Zacharias’ exceptional pianism--he has been much admired here, since his debut with the Philharmonic in 1995--was on elegant display in Mozart’s Concertos Nos. 16 and 14, two pieces that seemed too much alike to offer much contrast.

The pianist’s stylish and bravura playing impressed but was undermined acoustically by the placement of the solo instrument, its lid removed, facing the orchestra, the soloist with his back to the audience. This achieved a nice blend but resulted in a lack of clarity.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor-pianist Christian Zacharias, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.; tonight at 8; also Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $12-$78. (323) 850-2000.