Second wind quite wonderful

Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos has been bringing provocative programs and illuminating performances to the Los Angeles Philharmonic since his first visit here, 36 years ago last month.

Over the weekend, the veteran Spanish conductor brought another such musical agenda to the orchestra when he made his first appearances in Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Friday night, the performance began uneventfully with a clear but careful run-through of Beethoven’s beloved Fourth Symphony, a reading missing much of the charm and wit the work contains. An educated observer might credit this lack of energy in the performance not on Fruhbeck’s detailed leadership but on the fact that the players of the Philharmonic had returned from their latest European tour just two short days earlier. Fatigue may have been a factor.

Things improved measurably after intermission, when concertmaster Alexander Treger took the stage for his annual appearance as soloist before the orchestra, where he is the second-in-command violin leader. Treger, assisted handsomely by Fruhbeck and the orchestra, gave what can only be seen as a definitive performance of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, a work Treger seems born to play and rediscover.

One must resort to some great violinists of the past in describing Treger’s thrust, panache and clarity; they recall the biting gutsiness of an Ivry Gitlis and the all-encompassing sweetness of a Nathan Milstein. Conductor and orchestra shared the extended ovation then given by the large Friday night audience.

More pure pleasures ended the evening when Fruhbeck brought back the two suites from Manuel de Falla’s “The Three-Cornered Hat,” a work he has conducted here before, most recently with the National Orchestra of Spain, four years ago in Costa Mesa. As before, all the work’s riotous colors and fragrant melodies were on display in an urgent but unhurried reading that savored the lavish panorama of Falla’s imagination. Very exciting, very controlled, very Fruhbeck.