Old friend on the podium, new trio as part of the mix

Launching a new chamber group is hard work. Launching a new chamber group as busy symphony players is harder.

That, at any rate, was the impression created by the debut Tuesday night at the Hollywood Bowl of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Piano Trio. Composed of orchestra principals -- violinist Martin Chalifour, cellist Peter Stumpf and pianist Joanne Pearce Martin -- the trio played Beethoven’s Triple Concerto joyfully with their compatriots, led by insightful former Philharmonic associate conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya.

Unfortunately, the pleasant performance wasn’t as original or polished as that of an A-list chamber group.

Despite the liquid-metal tone and stylish vibrato of a celebrated concertmaster, Chalifour didn’t render Beethoven’s trickiest passages more deeply than showy orchestra solos. Martin played with an accompanist’s cautious sensitivity. Throughout the safe, good-taste interpretation, Stumpf, with his open-hearted tenor, proved the most soloistic.

It was an uneven expressive mix, and rarely, despite pleasant dynamic balances and fluid transitions, did the effort sound better than a pickup group of top orchestra players -- though that was still awfully good.

The concert’s rightful distinction was the return of Harth-Bedoya, who drew expressive luxuriance from the orchestra and whose broad-shouldered assuredness, deft melodic instincts and rhythmic solidity gave both Smetana’s “Bartered Bride” Overture and Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony drama and gravitas.

In the Smetana -- a perpetual round of fast, short-note runs that jump from instrument to instrument -- he inspired chamber music from his spot-on players, injecting articulate surprise entrances into the foreground with syncopated, staccato bite.

Obviously esteemed by these musicians, many of whom saw him mature into a polished maestro in the late 1990s, Harth-Bedoya sculpted rolling musical hills in the Dvorak’s pastoral outer movements and infused the middle, shorter movements -- a love letter and dance -- with buoyant grace.

He wasn’t carried away by the soaring violin lines he induced and was therefore able to animate plucking violas and texturizing horns. The effect was Wagnerian transcendence, Schubertian nostalgia and Tchaikovsky-grade lilt: everything Dvorak’s Eighth can be.

Never, in his communicative hands, did the score feel too heavy, too light, too fast or slow. Timing and balance are in this young maestro’s blood, and lucky are the audiences of Auckland and Fort Worth, who now get to hear him regularly. Next summer, he should be brought back with an epic Brahms symphony, and the dates should keep coming.