Putting the finish on Beethoven

Very often, where there is a single landmark piece in one solo genre by a great composer, there are also-rans lurking in the shadows -- like the “other” Mendelssohn Violin Concerto or the “other two” Tchaikovsky piano concertos. Even Beethoven has one: a single unfinished concerto movement in C major written in his early 20s, apparently the beginnings of an aborted violin concerto.

This is no big secret. Beethoven’s piece is out there, having been completed and published several times by various scholars -- and, occasionally, a virtuoso in search of something new yet familiar-sounding decides to take it up.

Los Angeles Philharmonic concertmaster Martin Chalifour tried it out at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday night, adopting Wilfried Fischer’s 1972 completion (which Gidon Kremer and Sergiu Luca have recorded) with a cadenza by Takaya Urakawa and some tweaks of his own.

In this version, it’s a pleasant, good-natured, modestly melodious 15-minute sonata-form movement in Beethoven’s early classical style, with obvious streaks of the composer’s emerging vitality and some busy solo passagework.

But it leaves you wanting too much more, setting listeners up for two additional movements that don’t exist.

Chalifour made his points with a light-weighted classical approach, while the conductor, Sir Andrew Davis, tended to soft-pedal the passages of Beethovenian strength.

As a counterweight, Chalifour returned after intermission with Dvorak’s more self-contained Romance in F Minor, displaying a songful yet unsentimental command of the sustained lines.

This was the first of two programs that Davis has planned with the Philharmonic, opening with a fine, invigorating, astutely paced Richard Strauss “Don Juan” -- with the horns doing themselves proud -- and closing with a Beethoven Symphony No. 2 that ran at comfortable tempos yet lacked a forceful temperament, particularly the Scherzo and Finale.

Next weekend, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Davis will be in his element, conducting British music old and new.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Sunday, 2:30 p.m.

Price: $14-$82

Contact: (323) 850-2000