Old World intensity gives new emotions

Russian conductor Yuri Temirkanov has a reputation as a paragon of Old World virtues. Partly, that’s due to his courtly manner, vigorous work ethic and antipathy for self-promotion. But Temirkanov’s strongest connection to tradition is musical, specifically his favoring warm feeling over cool precision in his interpretations of the standard repertory.

“He’s extremely emotional as a conductor,” pianist Yefim Bronfman, a frequent collaborator, said the other day. “He not only feels the music, but he’s able to transfer those feelings to others around him.”

Temirkanov, 66, who led the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall for the first time Thursday night, has been a frequent visitor here since 1988, conducting the orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He has also appeared locally with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, which has been his primary responsibility for nearly 17 years.

“There are orchestras I like to come back to and orchestras that I go to but hide my feelings,” he said through a translator Wednesday afternoon after a Philharmonic rehearsal. “But this orchestra is one I like.”

Still, though he brought his Russian players to Disney Hall in November, until Thursday he had not conducted the Philharmonic in more than five years. (The program of Ravel, Debussy and Tchaikovsky is to be repeated tonight and Sunday afternoon here and Saturday evening in Santa Barbara.)

He attributed his long absence to commitments in another American city: Since 1999, he has been music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a post he announced in September that he would leave at the end of next season.

Baltimore will feel a void, says Tim Smith, classical music critic of the Baltimore Sun. “We’re going to lose one of the world’s leading authorities on Russian composers of the 19th and 20th centuries,” Smith said last week. “When you have a living connection to Prokofiev and Shostakovich, you’ve really got something. And even though Temirkanov didn’t know Tchaikovsky or Rimsky-Korsakov, it’s as if he did. There’s an authority there.”

The conductor downplays those associations. “They weren’t my close friends,” he said. “Shostakovich listened to my conducting his works, and we discussed them. He also wrote me letters, and he gave me scores with dedications as a present.”

The time spent with Stravinsky was more amusing than musically significant, it seems, with Temirkanov accompanying the distinguished composer to the ballet -- where they caught “The Rite of Spring,” Stravinsky’s most famous work.

Offering his broadest smile of the afternoon, Temirkanov remembered some of the occasion like this: “After a short while, Stravinsky asked, ‘What are they playing?’ I said, ‘Your piece.’ And he responded, ‘No, I never wrote this’ and took his stick and left the theater. I don’t think he liked anybody conducting his works, although he himself couldn’t conduct at all.”

The link to Prokofiev is even stranger. “I was very small, not even 3 years old, and I only vaguely remember him,” said Temirkanov of the composer who died in 1953. “It was during the war, and he had been evacuated to my hometown. He stayed in my family’s house because my father was the minister of culture for the region.”

Such acquaintances, however slight, certainly enrich Temirkanov’s standing, but even without them he is a formidable artist. Yet unlike conductors whose work is captured relatively faithfully on recordings, he may be more persuasive in the concert hall.

He has long conducted without a baton, and though he sometimes jokes about why, he has said that he can better sculpt musical phrases with “10 batons,” meaning his fingers.

“I remember a Dvorak concerto in London around 20 years ago,” cellist Yo-Yo Ma said recently from his home in Cambridge, Mass. “Yuri stopped and started -- again and again, until he got what he wanted. I think he said fewer than seven words the whole rehearsal. Everything was through body language. And when we worked together with the Baltimore Symphony to open the Music Center at Strathmore in February, I saw the same technique.”

Bronfman echoes the sentiment. “Even though his movements are minimal, musicians love to play for him,” the pianist said.

“They find it so natural and easy, and they play their best for him.”

A modest poll of Philharmonic players elicited similar comments, with principal bass Dennis Trembly lauding Temirkanov as “a master of pantomime” who “encourages substance to your tone, regardless of frequency.”

Indeed, the harshest criticism offered of Temirkanov -- on the record, at least -- is that his musical interests are too narrow. “His biggest weakness will always be repertoire,” said Smith. “It’s not spectacularly expansive, and to a lot of people that’s a fatal flaw. His schedule doesn’t really permit much time for learning new pieces. But people who dismiss him as a Russian specialist simply have not been exposed to what he can and does do.”

Of course, on a fundamental level, Temirkanov is a Russian specialist, meaning that he cares most about things rooted in the country of his birth. He called the St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) Philharmonic “the main thing in my life,” drawing parallels between the ensemble and an extended family and taking pains to highlight the scope -- and burden -- of his responsibilities.

The job, he insisted, is the main reason he decided to give up the Baltimore position. (After next season, he is to become that orchestra’s conductor laureate, leading between two and four weeks of concerts annually, down from 12 weeks.)

“The work that trade unions do here, I do in St. Petersburg,” he said. “When money is needed, it is I who must ask for it.”

With shy pride, he mentioned how when he first took over, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, he had to pay the musicians himself to keep them from seeking work elsewhere.

His predecessor was the legendary Evgeny Mravinsky, whose iron grip on the orchestra lasted for 50 years, until he died. The two were anything but close, the elder man having jealously guarded his turf from a tyro he feared might dispossess him.

Yet some lessons transcend animosity, and today Mravinsky serves as Temirkanov’s model of unflagging duty. “When I see young conductors who perform in New York today, in Vienna tomorrow and somewhere in Italy the next day, then I remember him,” he said. “He worked hard and made everybody else work hard. The musicians probably didn’t enjoy it, but the results spoke for themselves.”

Mravinsky’s specter may also loom less productively, for Temirkanov seems to be dealing with succession as his former adversary did -- in other words, not at all.

“We all want to think we are honest people and have principles,” the conductor said. “Today, we have a good relationship, and if it stays like that, I will probably remain. But if the atmosphere changes, I would like to think I’d leave immediately. In general, I think the best quality of any artist is to leave the stage on time.”

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 8 tonight and 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $15 to $125

Contact: (323) 850-2000

or www.laphil.org

Also

Where: Arlington Theatre, 1317 State St., Santa Barbara

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Price: $35 to $75

Contact: (805) 966-4324

or www.camasb.org