Fine young soloists get the Phil’s full backing

Youth was served Tuesday night at the Hollywood Bowl, with veteran British conductor Andrew Davis ably leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an all-Mozart program featuring mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and pianist Orion Weiss.

Davis, music director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, offered fluent and unobtrusive support for his young soloists, who appeared together in the evening’s first half in the concert aria “Ch’io mi scordi di te.”

The conductor kept this demanding vocal gem coherent and unstrained. Solid underpinning from the Philharmonic combined with Leonard’s richly colored mezzo and Weiss’ crisp solo and obbligato piano to convey a touching purity in the work’s portrayal of a young woman’s suffering for love amid “cruel, pitiless stars.”

Leonard, 26, a native New Yorker and Juilliard graduate, returned after intermission for “Exsultate, jubilate.” There’s always some confusion in characterizing this eternally popular piece. Is it a motet? A cantata? Or, as the program note simply put it, “a small concerto for soprano and orchestra,” by turns operatic and symphonic? Whatever it is, the previously rather tepid Bowl audience suddenly stood and cheered after Leonard’s ardent rendition of the concluding “Alleluia.”

Throughout, she resisted turning the three-movement vocal concerto into a mere showpiece, singing with character and passion. She maintained a full, rounded tone in a work usually sung by a coloratura soprano, summoning an effortless soprano-like top when called for.

In the Piano Concerto No. 17 before intermission and the concluding Symphony No. 38 (“Prague”), technical problems compromised unalloyed enjoyment.

Weiss’ clarity of articulation in the concerto, marked by frequent staccato, vied with a rather hard, artificial-sounding tone that was probably a result of the piano’s close miking. The ear eventually adjusted, though, and Weiss’ performance was full of drive and conviction.

Yet it was the Philharmonic woodwinds and strings that delivered much of the multihued color and warmth, highlighted by Michele Grego’s nimble bassoon.

Weiss, 26, studied with Emanuel Ax at Juilliard. He’s clearly a pianist to watch. And to be fair, his reading might have sounded more sensitively shaped, rather than sharply etched, in a more manageable and forgiving (indoor) venue.

After a horn bobble at the start of the “Prague” and then a temporary, though noticeable, sound system glitch, Davis and the Philharmonic settled into an energetic traversal of one of Mozart’s happiest inspirations.

Audiences loved him in Prague, where his “Marriage of Figaro” was doing big business. His confidence soared, and it shows in this impressive symphony -- one of his last four major masterpieces in the genre. But Mozart was never completely healthy in the Bohemian capital, and Davis didn’t underline the darkness lurking beneath. Still, the performance captured the inspired joy of a composer at the top of his game.

Davis opened the program, which will be repeated tonight, with a spirited reading of Mozart’s seldom-played overture to his late opera “La Clemenza di Tito,” in which he paid enlivening attention to color and dynamics.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 Highland Ave., Hollywood

When: 8 tonight

Price: $1 to $95

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