What’s left hanging in the balance

The Los Angeles Philharmonic left 2004 in glory’s blaze. Two chestnuts -- Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” and Handel’s “Messiah” -- were roasted on a magic fire that illuminated the majesty of the human spirit.

Then a tsunami tested humanity’s spirit. The news as 2005 dawns is terrible. Thursday night the orchestra began the new year with another stimulating project, this time the five Beethoven piano concertos, to be played over several days. First, though, music director Esa-Pekka Salonen made a solemn plea for help from his audience for the tsunami victims in South Asia.

When Mitsuko Uchida, the soloist for the five concertos, glided onstage, the Philharmonic confronted a benevolent force of nature. She makes a wonderful first impression, visually and musically. Her brisk entrance into Walt Disney Concert Hall was a blur of the lovely diaphanous fabrics she wears. From the second she sat at the piano bench, she appeared electrically charged, as if an internal musical “on” switch had been pressed.

All of this created a sense not just that Beethoven would be played for our pleasure but that playing Beethoven could do good for the world, further the filling of American Red Cross envelopes included in the programs. This is, to the Philharmonic’s credit, a responsible way to make music and to make music matter.

Such good karma perhaps persuades one to overpraise, especially given how easy a pianist Uchida is to love. What, in fact, is not to love in her playing, be it the warmth of her tone, the sense of flow of her phrasing, her combination of vigor and freedom? If it is a cliche to say that she gives life to Beethoven’s notes on the page, so be it. She does.

Still, the cycle, which began Thursday with the first two concertos, got underway by providing more immediate pleasure than deep inspiration. To some extent, that went with the territory of the program. These are early concertos, terrific in their own right, but written so the player can show off. The young Beethoven used them as calling cards for an ambitious composer and pianist. No. 2, which he composed first but published second, confines itself to the classical model, with the solo part a blur of pianistic flourishes and a slow movement of genuine beauty. No. 1 is big-boned and flashy (which is why Beethoven wanted to publish it first) and pushes the concerto form into new, heroic territory.

Still, the performances of both concertos were more in the spirit of cooperation than of conflict. Uchida had much to say, as she always does. The slow movements were memorable for her rhapsodic concentration, the finales for her feistiness. She may not be a soloist who goes into the battle with an orchestra, but she does like to egg one on, and she has the technique and energy and will to do so.

What was lacking was a powerful sense of drama. Salonen used smallish orchestras, in keeping with the early Classical period nature of these works, but he went for a full sound anyway (he had to, given that Uchida doesn’t hold back). But seldom did the orchestra seem more than a stolid backdrop for the soloist. It could not match her living-in-the-moment quality, her exquisite nuance.

This is often a problem with Uchida in concertos. Although she is a highly social player, one who listens closely and interacts with other players, she also gives the impression of being in her own world. That world, in solo works by Mozart, Schubert, Debussy or Schoenberg, can be a place of sheer enchantment. She demonstrated that once more in the two big cadenzas, which Beethoven supplied for his early concertos years after the works had been written. They are more mature Beethoven, and Uchida played them as if at home in their strange realm. With the concertos to come, she will have more opportunity to share her strange, compelling visions, with an orchestra that may or may not be able to follow her there.

Meanwhile, the Philharmonic shined in an exquisite performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 (“Le Matin”), which Salonen conducted between the concertos, as a musical palate cleanser.

The first of a cycle of three symphonies meant to characterize the time of day (the other two will be interspersed throughout the concerto cycle), “Morning” is a slight symphony by a composer who would one day transform the genre. But the sweet simplicity of the music, which featured many eloquent instrumental solos from the Philharmonic roster, proved strangely moving. Like Beethoven, Haydn here was attempting to establish himself early in his career, but his audience was one of connoisseurs and he didn’t need to push quite so hard.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

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

When: 8 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Sunday, 8 p.m. Thursday through next Saturday, 2 p.m. Jan. 16

Price: $15 to $125

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