Illumination’s in short supply

LEIF OVE ANDSNES -- admired as a pianist with a talent for illuminating all the music his fingers touch and for touching a wide and interesting range of it -- began two weeks of concerts, big and small, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Tuesday night. There is a lot to look forward to.

Tonight the Norwegian pianist plays one of his country’s most famous scores, Grieg’s Piano Concerto, and there is good reason to expect that he will cut through the sentimentality and demonstrate why Grieg inspired two of the most far-reaching musical minds in 20th century music -- Percy Grainger and John Cage. Next week, Andsnes will delve into Gyorgy Kurtag, the intense Hungarian miniaturist awarded the $200,000 Grawemeyer Award for music composition Monday.

Mozart has a big role in Andsnes’ repertory here as well, and that is what he played Tuesday night in his appearance with the Philharmonic Chamber Music Society. But on this occasion, illumination proved less an attraction than a predicament.

The evening began with bad lighting, which is not a small matter. Physically, light and sound are both waves. Psychologically, light affects how we hear, sound how we see, since each phenomenon affects mood. The Music Center, having first dulled some of Disney’s shine to mollify cantankerous neighbors, now illuminates the hall at night with banal lighting that diminishes the steel’s sensuality. In the lobby, wonderful architecture is trivialized with Wal-Mart-cheap holiday decorations and snowflake projections.

Then, in the hall, where light is wanted, gloom prevailed. However intimate Disney may feel, however immediate its acoustics, it is no chamber music venue and needs all the help it can get in bringing more than 2,000 people in contact with four or five players onstage. Tuesday’s concert began with the members of a string quartet seated in a pool of light as if at the center of a dark cavern.

The work played was Shostakovich’s last string quartet, his 15th. Though nearly the end of the line for the composer, who was dying as he wrote it, it is, one might argue, his richest, most original and bravest work.

Four extremely slow movements are followed by an even slower fifth. Death haunts every corner of the score, but in a way that reminds us of the wonder of life. After a hopeless decades-long struggle with Stalin, Shostakovich finally found in Death an opponent he couldn’t scorn, an opponent he could actually look in the eye. He did so in music otherworldly yet remarkably of this world.

The well-played, tightly contained performance, however, looked no one in the eye. The Philharmonic quartet seemed to agree on everything, and first violinist Bing Wang’s restraint and pure tone proved particularly impressive. But I had hoped for more individuality from players well-known in their capacities as orchestra members.

The two Mozart pieces in which Andsnes participated after intermission were the heart-rending G-minor Piano Quartet and the exquisite Quintet for Piano and Winds. The piano dominated, but in neither work did Andsnes particularly lead. Oddly enough, a pianist who can bring a needed Mozartean refinement to, say, overstated Rachmaninoff has less to say when it comes to actual Mozart.

Once more, performances full of elegance and polish lacked a strong point of view. The G-minor Quartet was phrased as nicely as you could wish, as long as your wish wasn’t for daring drama.

The wind players had cheerier music and took a few more chances. The reading was a bit warmer than tepid, and in the concluding Rondo spirits began to bubble if not exactly soar. Mozart’s big bursts of E-flat major were obviously meant in this program to turn on emotional lights dimmed by Shostakovich’s obsessive revolving around E-flat minor and to prepare the audience for its return to the Disneyland lobby. I mean, the Disney lobby.