Holding sway with the Phil

In an interesting (deliberate?) confluence of programming, the leaders of Germany’s Bamberg Symphony -- the principal conductor, Jonathan Nott, and the honorary conductor, Herbert Blomstedt -- could be found at Walt Disney Concert Hall within two weeks of each other this fall.

Both came to town to accompany the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “On Location” resident violinist, Joshua Bell, in the most basic repertoire imaginable, and both chose a Schubert symphony as counterweights.

Thursday night, though, Nott proved to be a more enterprising programmer than Blomstedt was in mid-October, selecting the strangely underplayed Schubert Symphony No. 6 and prefacing it with Hans Werner Henze’s 1997 bicentennial tribute to one of Schubert’s most celebrated songs, “Erlkonig.”

Henze turned 80 in July, yet the five minutes of “Erlkonig” seems to be the only exposure the Philharmonic is giving to this important, stimulating, stylistically freethinking composer in his milestone year.

Within these five minutes lies a sleek motor setting the driving pulse; the writing is busy and detailed yet always headed in a discernible direction; and Henze’s clear, spectacular orchestrations were illuminated beautifully in this hall. Not programming more of the composer’s vast, varied, colorful output is a missed opportunity. One would think that some of his more complex pieces -- the fifth and sixth symphonies, for example -- would be a good fit for Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Schubert’s Sixth -- sometimes called the “Little C Major” -- is the great sleeper of his cycle, bounding with strong rhythms and premonitory hints of the mighty Ninth Symphony to come. Nott displayed a superb grasp of those rhythms in the Scherzo and enforced graceful, polished phrasing elsewhere, aided by stylish playing from the Philharmonic winds. In the Finale, Nott had ideas of his own, taking a rather deliberate tempo most of the way, only to accelerate down the stretch to the end.

Bell, of course, was the primary draw for those who flocked to see him strike his soulful, swaying poses and hear his latest idiosyncratic take on the Brahms Violin Concerto. At his best, he could muster a ripe, sweet tone with sparing use of vibrato. And like many of his predecessors from the 19th and early 20th centuries, he contributed his own first movement cadenza, squarely within the tradition with paraphrases of Brahms, self-dialogues and melting double stops.

Yet I found the total performance curiously unmoving. For all of Bell’s expressive devices, there was little depth or coherent sense of shape in his Brahms, and there were a few notes that jabbed painfully at the listener. He did, however, receive sympathetic support from Nott and the Philharmonic.

*

Los Angeles Philharmonic

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

When: 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $15 to $135

Contact: (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.com

Also

Where: Arlington Theatre, 1317 State St., Santa Barbara

When: 8 tonight

Price: $35 to $75

Contact: (805) 963-4408