Conductor stands tall before Philharmonic

It is never fair, we all know, to prejudge anyone, not even a new conductor. But as he began his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall Thursday night, Stephane Deneve made it difficult not to jump to a teeny-weeny conclusion or two.

His training came from being assistant to two popular and celebrated but not universally admired music directors: the late, musically boorish Georg Solti in Paris and the often insubstantial Seiji Ozawa in Japan. Deneve visits, thus far, the respectable but not exactly glamorous world of second-tier orchestras and opera companies in towns such as Cincinnati, Seattle and Rotterdam. (Although he has experience as well with the main Paris orchestras, they remain persistently second tier and glamour challenged.) This year, Deneve becomes music director of Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

He’s tall, with Otto Klemperer’s build and with a rag-mop haircut that Klemperer might himself have sported in the ‘30s. His conducting gestures can be clumsy, just as Klemperer’s were. So observing Deneve step up to the podium Thursday for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, standing dramatically taller than soloist Midori, and give his first unimpressive-looking upbeat, one couldn’t help but fear the worst -- a crass, insubstantial conductor with Klemperer airs.

So much for first impressions. Deneve demonstrates an almost uncanny ability to make music speak with clarity and freshness. That first upbeat may not have looked like much, but the delicate and determined timpani strokes hung in the air as a kind of magical curtain raiser. Attention was immediately commanded.

When the orchestra entered, it sounded both substantial and transparent. Using an unusually large band by current historically correct standards, Deneve produced a Beethoven sound of pleasurable weight and fruitiness. It was, I suppose, the sound a great old Cabernet would make if wine were a symphony orchestra. Dare we describe the orchestral part of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto as delicious? Maybe not. But that was exactly the impression.

Deneve’s Beethoven is something no longer much encountered -- the French Beethoven of the two great Pierres, Monteux and Boulez. That means spicy sonorities, sharply attacked rhythms, exactingly delineated (but not predictable) phrasing, invigorating intellectual rigor and clean textures. It is Beethoven that makes perfect sense but with a logic that demonstrates gripping character.

Midori made sense too, but in a different way. She seemed less to play Beethoven than to play the violin, which she does superbly. Actually, she gave the impression not so much of playing the violin as of being the violin. The silken purity of her tone defies the laws of physics, which insist that the sound of bow rubbing on strings cannot produce a flawless sine wave.

Once thought in some circles mechanical, Midori has clearly developed as an artist. She has added emotion, agitation and passion to her technical arsenal. But her interpretive fervor can come across as that of a prisoner trying to break free of her instrument. One listens and watches with fascination. She tirelessly spins her silk and braids it into exquisite sonic ropes. But whether they will serve only to further tie her to her violin or provide her with the means of escape is a drama still to be played out. For her, Beethoven’s score maps an escape route absorbed but not yet taken.

Deneve is French and it was French music he turned to after intermission -- first Faure’s Suite from “Pelleas et Melisande,” then Albert Roussel’s second suite from “Bacchus et Ariane.” The Faure, agreeable music, was supple and subtle. Roussel’s 1931 ballet provided a riot of color, the bacchanal at the end lurid yet lucid as only the French can be when intoxicated.

Esa-Pekka Salonen has, in the past three months, got the Philharmonic playing consistently better than I have ever heard it, and Deneve capitalized on ensemble virtuosity, brought tangy flavor to solos and gauged the Disney acoustic just right. His bio indicates that he has little experience with orchestras of this caliber. That’s got to change.