A Bowl-ful of Vivaldi, with salsa as seasoning

LIKE a postmodern ketchup, or figs, Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” goes with anything these days. Play the concertos on guitars, kotos, saxophones if you like. It’s already been years since Gilles Apap manically completed Vivaldi’s set with Jewish tunes, Irish reels and a “schizoid whistler” and since Gidon Kremer served up an arresting “Seasons” mix of Vivaldi and tango master Astor Piazzolla.

At the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, Vivaldi got seasoned with salsa. But even this multi-culti concoction for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the band Salsa Dura, the Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto and the New York trombonist Jimmy Bosch wasn’t exactly new. The arrangement by Jeff Lederer was first presented at the Ravinia Festival three years ago.

It’s a mess. Lederer is not bad at creating a musical fusion cuisine, when he finally gets around to it. But he worries the process to death, introducing first Vivaldi, then salsa and only gradually bringing them together as if reproducing a ritual of cultural assimilation. The effect is like being served an Italian pasta dish, followed by sushi, then various forms of spaghetti enhanced by bits of raw fish and soy sauce, and -- at last -- excellent Japanese pasta with salmon roe, olive oil and Parmesan. But by then nothing tastes good. One expects the chef to have worked things out in advance.

Tuesday, at least three other chefs were involved besides Lederer, who presided over the salsa component. Nicholas McGegan, a specialist in Baroque music, conducted the Philharmonic, and he did so with splendid spirit, his joyfulness and vivacious musicality proving the best sort of barrier breaker. Kuusisto, who was born in 1975, cultivates a gee-whiz teenage style. He is a true whiz, with an agile technique. He dances around the stage merrily, flashing proud smiles when he comes up with a flashy embellishment.

Bosch, the salsa trombonist, is used to commanding the stage himself and playing his own music. He proved surprisingly successful and subtle when he commented musically on Vivaldi, but he also sounded constricted doing so and didn’t do it often. Salsa Dura, which is his backup group, is a fine Latin ensemble, and he was clearly most comfortable in action with it.

As a battle of the bands, this was an unequal one. Salsa is loud, has its own ideas about intonation and employs aggressive rhythmic grooves. Vivaldi’s concertos, descriptive of nature, are ever changeable, often delicate and easily overpowered.

By the end, everyone was playing salsa, and playing it engagingly -- McGegan bopping to the beat, Kuusisto coming up with intriguing improvisations. But only here was there a real sense of interaction. At certain points, Lederer conducted the salsa band minimally and seemingly myopically, in a world of his own.

The first half of the program was disorienting in different ways. McGegan began with a rousing performance of Handel’s “Royal Fireworks Music,” brilliantly played by an orchestra reduced to about 50 and approximating a period instrument style. For a Bowl-goer, Handel’s score, of course, produces a Pavlovian response. Eyes turn skyward in anticipation of bombs bursting in air. The music is generally mere accompaniment to, and usually drowned out by, pyrotechnics

There were no fireworks this time, just Handel, excitingly reclaimed. Salsa Dura has an impressive brass section. But so does the Philharmonic, and in an evening of much flashy brass playing, the Philharmonic’s associate principal trumpet, James Wilt, was the class act in “Royal Fireworks.”

An unfussy Handel concerto, the second from his Opus 3 set, followed. Elegantly played by strings and oboes, it was an over-eager evening’s lone voice of delicious understatement.