A graceful sculptor of sound

Last time we spotted Yuri Temirkanov in Walt Disney Concert Hall (Nov. 17, 2004), he was showing off his touring St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Thanks to a quirk in the schedule, he came back Thursday night as guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And it was a welcome return, for this experienced Russian brings something different and appealing to the table of the hometown crew.

There is the obvious physical style -- Temirkanov’s batonless hands sweeping gracefully side to side or subtly implying his intentions with barely a gesture, not too concerned with a precise beat and not needing one. There is the personalized way in which he molds the phrases, forming wondrously curvaceous, swelling waves, with one group of instruments yielding fluidly to the next.

As he demonstrated in the St. Petersburg concert, Temirkanov also likes his brasses loud and brazen, sometimes far too much for the good of the balance in this hall.

For some reason, he completely overhauled the originally announced program, trading the Bizet/Shchedrin “Carmen Ballet” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” for another Franco-Russian lineup.

He started with one of Ravel’s greatest delicacies, “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” in which the first and third movements were perfectly paced, the phrases melting seductively into one another. The second movement was a wee bit slow yet with a firm rhythm, the fourth movement way too fast for comfort.

Debussy’s “La Mer” was sufficiently mysterious at the outset, brightly lighted, leaning toward leisurely tempos in the first movement yet gathering drive amid the wash of gorgeous detail in the remaining sections -- with the brasses overpowering everything in the smashing close.

Some might yawn at the prospect of spending 45 minutes with the familiar tunes and sequences of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” but the fact is that we rarely hear this music in a concert hall (usually we get it from recordings, badly amplified pit bands at the ballet or outdoor pops concert run-throughs).

Furthermore, Temirkanov was in his core element, getting off to a beautiful shimmering start with no schmaltz, shaping the famous waltz with an irresistible sweep, dashing through the Hungarian and Spanish dances, taking nothing for granted. And it was a chance for solo instruments -- Lou Anne Neill’s sparkling harp, Bing Wang’s throbbing violin, Daniel Rothmuller’s sympathetic cello -- to shine in the live Disney Hall acoustics.

All of this, alas, was undercut somewhat by one of the louder obbligatos of coughers in the hall’s brief history. Use the provided cough drops, folks -- they work!

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

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

When: 8 tonight

Price: $35 to $75

Contact: (805) 966-4324 or www.camasb.org

Also

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

When: 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $15 to $125

Contact: (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.org