Secure, not so sensual

There’s more than one Brahms. One is the young composer, a musical firebrand and, on the evidence of contemporary portraits, a dashing dreamboat. Another is the better-known, formidable old man we see in the daguerreotypes: a sturdy, bearded, cigar-smoking classicist who wrote thick, heavy symphonies. Schoenberg thought Brahms a model for modernism, but he had to argue his case hard. By the early 20th century, Brahms already represented the past.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, which Thursday night offered the second program in a two-week Brahms symphony cycle conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi, has a tradition of going back and forth among various Brahmses. In the 1980s, Carlo Maria Giulini infused the four symphonies with an incomparable spiritual glow of amber, autumnal beauty. Around the same time, Leonard Bernstein showed up at the Hollywood Bowl to conduct a Philharmonic-sponsored training orchestra in a Brahms Second with musical sex on the brain, lavishing extraordinary corporeal attention on every delicious detail.

A decade ago, Roger Norrington led a “Brahms Experience” with the orchestra in which the symphonies were played outrageously fast and depicted hidden theatrical programs. He got through all four in about the time it took Bernstein to play one.

Dohnanyi, however, shows little interest in playing to the senses. His Brahms is an exercise in virtuous denial. He began Thursday at Walt Disney Concert Hall with an unshakably rooted-to-the-ground Fourth Symphony. He concluded with a somber Second, which most conductors treat as something more pastoral.

I can’t say whether we, orchestra and audience, are better for having a highly respected, deeply serious 77-year-old master musician banning flash from a flashy orchestra, concert hall and town. Whether you diet or indulge is a question of taste and personality. But given that Los Angeles is a place where diets and lavish lifestyles don’t clash, a bit of blameless Brahms was clearly welcome.

What with Los Angeles Opera across the road promising a sexually explicit production of “Tannhauser” -- by Brahms’ rival, and a famed lascivious life-styler, Wagner -- and with Hollywood consumed by Oscar trivia, no-frills Brahms has its attractions. Houses, for the cycle, have sold very well. Thursday’s concert started late in sympathy with commuters on a rainy night, but audiences braved clogged freeways and filled the hall.

Dohnanyi takes great pains to dampen the Philharmonic’s naturally bright sound. He doesn’t bring out inner lines for their own sake. Quite often I strained to hear the violas or cellos, which in Brahms regularly add interesting complexity, decorating the harmonies by playing off the beat. Instead, Dohnanyi insists upon a firm bass and sweeping melodic lines, with everything else adding to a dense but indistinct texture. By removing the risers and seating most of the orchestra level on the stage, he further mitigates against Disney’s contributing to the immediacy of individual instruments.

The result is the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Brahmsian Rock of Gibraltar. Shorn of sensuality, the orchestra offers the pleasure of security instead.

The Fourth Symphony grew from first moment to last in cumulative power. Dohnanyi allowed some elasticity of tempo in the swaying first movement, but one phrase was always attached to the next with superglue. In the big passacaglia finale, where the same rising bass line is repeated over and over, the conductor built pillars of a foundation.

By the time he finished, he had a mighty structure that could withstand anything, including those of us who like our Brahms a tad more intoxicating.

The Second Symphony is flowing music throughout, and flow it did, although with some, I thought, dour and dull patches particularly in the slow movement. But Dohnanyi drives extremely well, and in both symphonies the scherzos had an amazing amount of torque. Brahms shifts rhythms, but Dohnanyi never makes it feel as though he is shifting gears. The momentum of the Second’s final movement was splendid.

Although the Philharmonic players are said to find working with Dohnanyi inspiring, he does not always bring out the best in them. He forces them to play against character, and the effort shows. Not only was there less natural glow to the brass and winds on Thursday than usual, but the strings were muddy, although densely, not sloppily, so.

Dohnanyi’s sound may be an acquired taste.

During his 18 years as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, that ensemble was almost universally hailed as the finest in the land, and Dohnanyi, who is principal conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and heads the NDR Symphony in Hamburg, Germany, is said to be much missed in Ohio.

Now, in a curious twist, Hamburg is building a new concert hall with acoustics designed by Disney Hall acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota. And Thursday at Disney, Toyota, just back from Hamburg, said that yes, the new hall will have risers.

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

Price: $15 to $135

Contact: (323) 850-2000

or www.laphil.com