The case of the perplexing maestro

In 1984, Christoph von Dohnanyi became music director of an orchestra many felt was the finest in America. In 2002, he left the Cleveland Orchestra perhaps even finer than he found it. The intervening years were very good ones for Cleveland -- and for music in America.

Dohnanyi not only proved a model caretaker of a great orchestra but the model of a responsible music director. He is an eloquent and deeply cultured conductor, steeped in the classics, attentive to the present, a musician’s musician. I heard him and Cleveland annually for several of those years, mostly on their regular tours to Carnegie Hall in New York. The programming was always interesting, and the performances were never less than superbly played.

And yet, Dohnanyi’s Cleveland tenure fell frustratingly short of the stuff of legend. Time after time, at the end of a terrific performance, I recall wondering why it wasn’t just a tiny bit more terrific, why it fell a hairsbreadth short of greatness. After hearing Dohnanyi make his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday night, I’m still wondering.

Make no mistake: This week’s concerts are something to hear, even if the program -- Mozart’s Symphony No. 25, Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” and Schumann’s Second Symphony -- is not as venturesome as were many of Dohnanyi’s Cleveland concerts. Maybe Dohnanyi felt he had to play it safe if he wanted to coax luxurious virtuosity and refinement from an unfamiliar ensemble. Maybe, at 74, he’s just into playing it safe these days.

But he got that Cleveland-esque virtuosity and refinement out of the Philharmonic, and witnessing his command of every detail of sound and phrase brought enormous pleasure. Indeed, aural riches so abounded in the stellar Disney acoustic that it felt greedy to want more ... more what? Possibly passion. An excitable soloist once told me that the night after playing a concerto with Dohnanyi that she felt had gone well and that had won critical raves, she dreamed of giving him a hotfoot.

A magnificently played “Till Eulenspiegel” came closest Thursday to demonstrating how Dohnanyi brushes with greatness. A large orchestra played with phenomenal sense of purpose. The prankish elements in Strauss’ early tone poem were vivid, and the interpretation was expertly put together. Sassiness balanced sensuality; the richness of the sound was nearly sinful, the Philharmonic turned on a dime. But one’s awe and satisfaction came from admiring something that worked really well, while Strauss’ Till is a musical troublemaker always messing things up.

In Mozart’s early, precious G-minor symphony, Dohnanyi found an admirable balance between vigor and lyricism. One phrase followed another with the surety of everything functioning as it should. The playing of a reduced Philharmonic sounded tight but never constricted. In Schumann’s Second Symphony, Dohnanyi emphasized sweep. The result was almost as if the symphony were a single, glorious phrase, its inner parts like all the gears of a fine watch busily functioning to produce the elegant sweep of a golden second hand.

There is something to be said for the manic, elemental excitement that Daniel Barenboim brought to Schumann’s Fourth Symphony in Orange County during his recent appearance with the Staatskapelle Berlin. But there is also something to be said for the cultural refinement, sophistication, stunning sound and edge-of-the-seat virtuosity in Dohnanyi’s Schumann. And what local won’t get a kick out of hearing the Philharmonic from upstart Los Angeles give a 400-year-old German orchestra a run for its money?

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall,

111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Today, 8 p.m.; Sunday,

2 p.m.

Price: $15-$120

Contact: (323) 850-2000