Shostakovich, finely projected by Chang

WITH joy, confidence and drama, Leonard Slatkin conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in music by Glinka, Brahms and Shostakovich on Tuesday at the Hollywood Bowl.

The heart of the program turned out to be Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, with Sarah Chang as soloist. In 2004, she, Slatkin and the Philharmonic had played it during the conductor’s first concerts in Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The four-movement work, written for the composer’s friend David Oistrakh, is fiendishly difficult, technically and emotionally. It is another of Shostakovich’s vast landscapes of desolation and of survival at perilous cost to the human soul.

Chang managed the technical hurdles with admirable accuracy and seeming ease and was most impressive in the fast, flashy, extroverted movements -- although, like most violinists, she took the Scherzo at less than Shostakovich’s quick tempos. The video projections allowed close focus on her fingers as they negotiated the composer’s awkward and clenched-hand demands, and also on her powerful and varied bowings.

Still, she hit her emotional stride only in the third movement -- the Passacaglia evoking a police state -- and the diabolical cadenza that leads to the final Burlesca, whose klezmer-influenced sounds suggest that if you dance frantically enough, you will stop feeling pain.

Slatkin, who will conclude his first season as principal guest conductor of the Philharmonic at the Bowl tonight, countered that intensity by closing the concert with a grand, lyrical account of Brahms’ First Symphony, clear and open in texture and expressive without sentimentality.

Oboist Marion Kuszyk reinforced that approach with her sensitive solo opening the second movement, and clarinetist Lorin Levee and concertmaster Martin Chalifour contributed similar moments.

The conductor followed through by introducing the big tune of the final movement with a gentle introspection rather than the usual confident stride. But he brought the symphony to its proper majestic close.

The program opened with a zestful reading of Glinka’s “Ruslan and Lyudmila” Overture.