Belohlavek finds the heft in Dvorak’s sprightly Sixth

Dvorak’s Sixth Symphony starts by sidling up to an awfully good tune. Soft horns, silky divided violas and cheerful winds set the tone. The tune, which swells beguilingly, feels like it could bring good fortune. Once possessed by the inner ear, it is something to call forth when you need a spring in your step or a lucky roll of the dice.

This genial symphony, which is not played often and which opened the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s mostly Czech program at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday night, means to please. And Jiri Belohlavek, who was making his debut with the Philharmonic, meant it to please. But he also meant it to mean something more than this tune, or the miraculous main melody of the second movement.

Dvorak can be a problem composer outside the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He may never lose his reputation in Germany as a welterweight Brahms, a mere maker of glowing melodies, luxuriant harmonies and lovely tone colors. When he is dark and stormy, he shows you what you see out your window on a rainy day, not what you feel in you mind during a black night of self-loathing. He doesn’t do development with Brahmsian originality or daunting complexity. He lets the moon do his dreaming for him.

But the finest Czech conductors, in whose company Belohlavek can be counted, don’t see him quite so simplistically. Belohlavek’s performance Thursday wasn’t particularly pretty. He made the Philharmonic, a shiny and sleek band, sound almost unrecognizably gritty. Suddenly there was sandpaper in the string tone, bubbly spit in the winds, a rasp in the brass. This is what the Prague orchestras might sound like if they played as well as the Philharmonic.

But even the Philharmonic didn’t play as well as it usually does. A few entrances were uncertain. Technically, Belohlavek is not an unclear conductor, and the Dvorak Sixth, seldom played though it is, should not be a special challenge to a virtuoso orchestra. But somehow Belohlavek, who conducted from memory, had the players on the edge of their seats. Nothing seemed easy, nothing sounded pat. One listened through the gravel for the gorgeousness.

Everything then made sense. I had always found the opening tune too good for the first movement of any symphony. When it is sweet and satisfying raw, why chop, stir and throw it on the fire, as a composer must in developing a big first movement of a symphony? But in its rougher form under Belohlavek, a song could smolder then blaze and come back more meaningfully caramelized than ever.

The Adagio had an amber ruddiness. Here the gorgeousness of the big tune (which, in its perfection, really defies development) was in its afterglow. Dvorak called the Scherzo a “furiant,” which is a Bohemian folk dance. Belohlavek furiously excited the feet. The last movement is weak but galloping. Belohlavek gave it momentum. The grit is not Belohlavek’s sound so much as his Dvorak sound.

He has just begun as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony, and his new live recording of Dvorak’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies with it is very similar in timbre. But when he concluded Thursday’s concert with a stunning performance of Janacek’s symphonic poem “Tara Bulba,” he returned the Philharmonic its sleek virtuosity. Orchestral fireworks exploded. Janacek’s bold colors were realized through flamboyant spectacle. Edgy rhythms cut like sharp knives. But lyric melodic fragments sang with deep-seated, unforgettable sweetness. It was brilliant.

Sarah Chang was also brilliant in Bruch’s Violin Concerto, which was the incongruous intermezzo between Dvorak and Janacek. She has grown from studious prodigy into a flashy young soloist. But the flash is inconsistent.

She began with a long held note full of promise and beguilement, but her rapid, sure passagework could get cocky. The pieces in her playing are not yet put together, but the raw material is outstanding. Belohlavek didn’t entirely hold her back, but he didn’t let her go too far either.

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mark.swed@latimes.com

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

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

When: 8 tonight, 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $15 to $135

Contact: (323) 850-2000,

www.laphil.org