Argerich causes Disney delirium

Pianist Martha Argerich certainly didn’t want to upstage conductor Charles Dutoit and the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra on Thursday at Walt Disney Concert Hall. But it was inevitable.

The fiery Argentine pianist had canceled two highly anticipated Los Angeles dates in 2006 because of illness, and a duo tour she had planned with pianist Nelson Freire four years earlier fell through. In fact, Argerich hadn’t played locally since 1999, in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and that performance came after an astonishing absence of 18 years.

So it was not surprising that she was greeted rapturously when she stepped onto the Disney stage. But after she played Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, the audience went ballistic. The applause and cheers rivaled the rock-star ovation awarded last week to Los Angeles Philharmonic music director-designate Gustavo Dudamel and his Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.

Indeed, if Argerich hadn’t led the Festival Orchestra offstage after playing two encores, the evening might have turned into a piano recital -- and that would have been just fine.

What accounted for the delirium? Her combination of poetry and power in taming the Prokofiev monster. She played with insight, bravura, an organic sense of discovery and a smile-inducing range of color and dynamics rarely heard from the hall’s Steinway grand. Every note was alive and yet seamlessly a part of a living whole.

The same qualities surfaced in her encores -- Scarlatti’s Sonata in D minor, K. 9 (L. 413), and two sections of Schumann’s “Kinderszenen” played as a set but apparently in reverse order, “Hasche-Mann” and “Von fremden Landen und Menschen.”

Dutoit, who was once married to Argerich, led the orchestra with a sensitivity that turned accompaniment into true collaboration. Surely he took as much pleasure in her playing as did the audience and the musicians who later applauded her fervently.

The Switzerland-based group, supported by UBS AG, a global private bank, is one of the leading training ensembles in the world. It was formed in 2000 as an adjunct to the Swiss summer festival and draws its 100-plus members, ranging in age from 17 to 29, from about 30 countries. The orchestra trains in the summer and goes on tour every November. Its roster rotates, but there’s an overlap of new and older members. That, and the different training of the musicians, might be a bit of a problem.

It was the last of three international orchestras participating in a Los Angeles Philharmonic celebration of youth, which will end Sunday with free performances by four Los Angeles-area ensembles.

In Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” which concluded the program, Dutoit led with a suave, knowing hand, and the young players responded with discipline, power and commitment. The “March to the Scaffold” was terrifying in its intensity, and the “Dream of a Sabbath Night” was vivid and eerie.

If the group isn’t quite at the level of a professional orchestra -- the dynamics are a bit over the top and the integration of ensemble is a little raw -- it compensates with joyful playing that refuted the notion that classical music is dying.

chris.pasles@latimes.com