In time, a cooling triumph

Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto first hits you like a wondrous summer shower, three luminous chords and then a cooling, glistening spray of scales and trills on the piano. A better Southern California analogy may be that of an initial leap into a crystalline blue swimming pool on a hot day -- three bounces on the diving board and then boom.

Perhaps someone actually had that invigorating experience at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night when two excellent young performers -- the Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov and the Swiss pianist Andreas Haefliger -- took the bracing Beethovenian plunge.

But in several boxes, dinners continued uninterrupted. Other picnickers hastily got up and moved chairs, dealt with trash, poured more wine, laughed, cooed, entertained surly children stuck with 45 minutes of Beethoven. Not to worry. The slow movement’s fervent, gorgeous prayerful tone signaled dessert.

An outrage? Sure. Political music, the Fifth Concerto, known as the “Emperor,” exemplifies musical nobility. In response to the occupation of Vienna by Napoleon’s army, Beethoven challenged his fellow Austrians to find inner strength. The world may not be without such troubled occupations today, but we do not intend to interrupt our pleasures.

And yet, there proved something curiously appropriate about the failure of the concerto’s opening measures to mean much on this occasion. The “Emperor” was written nearly 200 years ago in a place and time little like our own. It was hardly imagined for an 18,000-seat amphitheater for loudspeakers and video screens and picnicking, all now the emblem of the good life in Southern California.

So, as the evening progressed and as music struggled -- and succeeded! -- to gain a sybaritic audience’s attention, the concert, which also included Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, began to feel as though it might accomplish that most Beethovenian of goals: triumph over adversity.

Credit goes to Beethoven, of course. It goes, as well, to the purposeful conducting of Volkov and the crystalline playing of Haefliger. And it goes to the Bowl sound engineers who are beginning to choose more naturalistic settings for the new amplification system.

If the “Emperor” took a while to register with listeners, that may have been only partially the listeners’ fault. Both Volkov and Haefliger are models of well-groomed players. That is to say they don’t go in for event-making, for strands of musical hair out of place. However much Beethoven was a master of surprise, this was an interpretation of contentment.

Moreover, the amplification, so hot and synthetic sounding for the Philharmonic’s first concerts in the new shell last week, was toned down to the purist point of tonal and dynamic flatness. It took time for the ear to adjust.

Still, the beauty of Haefliger’s playing -- his steady hand, his even passage work, his lucid tone -- were apparent. It is not an exciting approach to the concerto, but security has its own draw.

Volkov, who is 28, is a conductor on the rise. Last year he became music director of the BBC Scottish Symphony; on Tuesday, he made his local debut. In both concerto and symphony, he left no doubt of solid musicianship. He favors clarity and incisive phrasing. He likes to give sharp cutoffs. In the Fifth Symphony, he moved from beginning to end with deliberate momentum. He made it hard to argue with his competence or confidence.

But as well-played and energetic as the symphony was, it felt perhaps just a shade too pat, with Volkov revealing little personal insight into some of the best-known music ever written. That, of course, may be too much to ask for at the Hollywood Bowl, and the Beethoven Fifth speaks for itself. But charisma carries a great deal of weight when a musician has such a large and distant audience to reach.

That has always been the case at the Bowl. It was true in the days when it was a natural acoustic setting and will continue to be even if the sound system improves further, which it very well might. For the symphony, heard from a central box, midway back, the sound proved decent -- still somewhat flat and lacking concert hall presence but well balanced and detailed and full.

Tonight will present a new and interesting challenge for the conductor. The concerto repeats, but the symphony will be replaced by John Adams’ glittery “Grand Pianola Music.”