Principal players shine at Bowl

There were no fireworks Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl, at least in the sky. On stage, however, there were plenty, with Leonard Slatkin leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program of French works in the first half, and Italian in the second.

Slatkin has always been a warm, genial and sensitive presence on the podium. Those qualities, combined with his good taste and fine musical judgment, brought out the best in the Philharmonic. This was a night in which many principal players needed to shine, and did.

In Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival Overture,” conductor and orchestra moved smoothly from poetic to frenetic, with Carolyn Hove’s spellbinding English horn handling much of the poetry. In Faure’s touching “Pavane,” Slatkin summoned ethereal sounds from Ariana Ghez (oboe), Michele Zukovsky (clarinet) and Catherine Ransom Karoly (principal flute for this performance).

The concert’s centerpiece, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, featured Andreas Haefliger, a Swiss pianist best known for playing Germanic masters. In March, he offered sober and technically assured accounts of Beethoven and Schubert sonatas at the Getty Center. But he did not seem entirely comfortable performing Ravel. His reading, though emotionally and intellectually engaged, could have used more color and panache. Moreover, Haefliger’s sharp tone -- perhaps magnified by the Bowl’s amplification system -- was better suited to the concerto’s snappy outer movements and less ideal for the hushed purity of the central Adagio assai.

Slatkin still managed to summon a compensating jazzy wit and buoyancy from the Philharmonic, but the Bowl’s giant video screens did the concerto no favors. The camera’s relentless focus on the pianist shorted the many fine orchestral soloists in Ravel’s chamber-like conception. The camera did, however, manage to turn its eye to Lou Anne Neill’s beguiling harp at the end of the first movement.

After intermission, the orchestra offered Rossini’s overture to “La gazza ladra” (“The Thieving Magpie”), rousing in the opening and closing martial sections, but not quite light and transparent enough in the scherzo-like middle ones.

Slatkin once said that it’s especially difficult to present intimate, reflective music at the Bowl, but he managed to do just that in what followed, Mascagni’s quietly moving Intermezzo from “Cavalleria rusticana,” which showed off the shimmering Philharmonic strings.

Respighi’s “Pines of Rome,” which premiered in 1924, can sound like a proto-film score for every biblical epic you ever saw. But whatever one thinks of this war horse, it still thrills audiences, and Slatkin delivered an inspired reading -- atmospheric, rhythmically flexible and intelligently shaped -- especially in the long, meditative passages.

The Philharmonic provided richly hued playing, with several principals, including a memorable Donald Green on trumpet, imbuing this music with real character. The conductor held the rapt audience through Respighi’s triumphant march finale. As triumphs go, it was also one for the Philharmonic.