Krieger’s multihued play boosts the Philharmonic

A great heritage of pianists living in Los Angeles exists, going back at least to the 1940s and ‘50s, when Beverly Hills was home to Sergei Rachmaninoff, Artur Rubinstein and Amparo and Jose Iturbi. Around the same time, and later, an informal school of pianists-teachers dominated the scene; that group included Ethel Leginska, Johana Harris, Jakob Gimpel and Muriel Kerr.

Today, important players are still resident on local university campuses. For example, at least three world-class pianists are on the faculty at the University of Southern California. Among these, young (35) Norman Krieger appeared three times over the weekend with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Heard Friday night, Krieger, with spirited assistance from associate conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the orchestra, gave a powerful performance of Liszt’s E-flat Piano Concerto, a spontaneous and resplendent reading.

Krieger commands the full resources that make this vehicle work, from potent strength to whispering pianissimos, including a variety of pianistic touches that give the score its many colors. Harth-Bedoya’s collaboration on the podium was total. An honest standing ovation followed the performance.

The conductor chose to reverse the usual overture-concerto-symphony order for this program, and it worked. He began with the most personal and subtle of Brahms’ symphonies, the Third, in F, eschewing the bombast some bring to its opening, and exposing throughout its inner life. The slow movement proved unusually transparent and poignant, and the following Poco allegretto reiterated the power of understatement. There was nothing willful in the conductor’s approach; the entire work emerged fluently and naturally; all the instruments sang.

The evening ended in a blaze of color in four Slavonic Dances by Dvorak, scrappily played.