Russian orchestra goes all-out at Disney Hall

Yuri Temirkanov has been music director of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic for 16 years, with the 50-year-long shadow of his predecessor, the now-iconic Evgeny Mravinsky, still looming in the background.

It has been an erratic 16 years, with lots of Western tours, flashes of revelation and routine, and the suspicion that Russia’s greatest orchestra was increasingly sounding like its counterparts in the West.

Well, banish the latter thought for now. There was no mistaking the distinctive Slavic timbral edge, innate passion and unified fervor of the St. Petersburgers on Wednesday night in their first visit to Walt Disney Concert Hall. Perhaps there was a bit too much fervor from the stinging brasses, pushing too hard in an acoustically live hall. But Temirkanov was masterful, revivifying core Russian repertoire in swift, detailed waves of excitement.

For starters, at last someone dared to play Prokofiev’s lovable “Classical” Symphony up to tempo.

Usually, the crucial first movement is taken way too slowly, and it creates a drag on the whole piece, dampening the composer’s gleeful satire on classical form. Even the Temirkanov/St. Petersburg 1991 recording suffers from slack pacing.

This time, though, Temirkanov was off to the races from the outset -- and the piece sparkled and winked, with hidden details darting all over the place and the Gavotte making its proper deadpan impression.

With gorgeously shaded, well-paced support from Temirkanov, guest soloist Lynn Harrell seemed only too happy to exploit Disney Hall’s acoustics in Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, playing as softly as he dared in the lengthy cadenza movement, digging in with lightweight warmth and peasant humor elsewhere.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathetique”) became a magnificent whirlwind, with sudden gusts of ardor in the first movement; uniquely long-breathed phrasings in the 5/4-meter waltz; a hard-driven, powerful, biting Scherzo/March; and a finale in which the whirlwind spent itself into sheer exhaustion.

This was a performance that summoned memories of the martinet Mravinsky. Temirkanov followed it with a surprise non-Russian encore, an eloquent statement of the “Nimrod” section from Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.”