Proving brave in the ‘New World’

Back from its European tour, the Los Angeles Philharmonic had little problem filling the seats of Walt Disney Concert Hall on Saturday afternoon, even with the Thanksgiving weekend shopping spree as competition. Either people were taking a musical breather from their rituals or these were hardy nonconformists resisting the ad-driven madness.

In any case, there was a sense of what used to be called normalcy in the programming -- bread-and-butter Brahms and Dvorak and a touch of rare yet comfortingly familiar-sounding Barber. The orchestra played for young assistant conductor Joana Carneiro with a firm brilliance that indicated no letup, or letdown, from the level achieved during the “Sibelius Unbound” series last month.

Barber’s First Essay for Orchestra -- a compact form of symphonic argument that he invented -- was given its premiere by Arturo Toscanini at the same concert that launched the famous Adagio for Strings. Indeed, the essay’s elegiac motif seems to pick up where the Adagio left off -- hence the feeling of familiarity -- before developing in an agitated direction and signing off in the middle of a sentence. Barber’s place in American music still violently divides critics today; some may hear this score as a musty throwback to the Romantic age, but to me, its ambiguity could have come only from the 20th century.

In previous concerts in front of the Philharmonic, Carneiro seemed to cut a curiously blank profile, with graceful baton motions that hardly varied at all, conveying not much of a point of view. That pattern, alas, continued through the Barber essay and a fairly routine Brahms Double Concerto, with section leaders Martin Chalifour (violin) and Peter Stumpf (cello) exchanging their arpeggiated lines with similarly relaxed temperaments. The tempos were comfortable and well-chosen, but very often the orchestral backgrounds were too loud in this live hall, masking the soloists with secondary detail.

Yet at last, in one of the weariest of war horses, Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, Carneiro came to life and showed some fire. As she worked without a score, her conducting displayed a sense of a shaping hand, most winningly in the string melodies of the Largo -- and even in some awkward passages in the opening movement, at least now there was a concept in play. Her best moments came toward the rip-roaring conclusions of the first and last movements, barreling along and energizing everyone around her. Perhaps it is just a matter of matching the right repertoire with her, for in this piece, Carneiro had plenty to say.