LAPO

Andrew Davis had already done well by the Los Angeles Philharmonic two months
ago, in a regularly scheduled appearance as guest conductor. This week he has
done even better, in a noble rescue operation.
This week’s concerts at the Music Center, Beethoven’s Second Symphony and the
Berlioz “Fantastic” Symphony, were slated as the program for Roger
Norrington’s debut with the orchestra. Norrington has had emergency surgery,
however, and Davis took over the same program, most handsomely. Despite less-
than-normal rehearsal time — he was engaged in England until two days before
Thursday night’s concert — he presented a superior evening of high-grade
musicianship, with support from the orchestra of like quality.
It wasn’t the evening it was going to be, of course. Norrington’s readings of
both these symphonies are known quantities from recordings: interesting,
powerful and, well, strange. Davis, instead, gave polished and spirited
versions of both works that had little in the way of iconoclastic value, but
much in the way of musical value.
The Beethoven, the composer’s high-spirited farewell to the musical methods of
a previous generation, is not nearly often enough heard for its fund of
delights. Davis managed those delights very well. If a single objection might
be advanced, it would embrace the rather spirited tempo for the slow movement
that is, after all, marked “larghetto.” This seemed to trivialize the
profound lyricism of this one movement.
The Berlioz went capitally: a raw, marvelously raucous reading of the final
movements, some lovely tenderness and mystery in what had come before. The
symphony, 160 years old, remains incredible. It is one of those works, daring
and iconoclastic when it appeared (only 3 years after Beethoven’s death but
utterly unrelated to anything in anyone else’s music) whose fund of modernity
has never faded. It stands beside the “Eroica” of Beethoven and Stravinsky’s
“Rite of Spring” as one of music’s imponderable forward steps.
This quotient of daring seemed uppermost in Daviss reading. His woodwinds
shrieked — best of all the ghostly dance from Michele Zukovsky’s clarinet in
the finale. His brass roared, his percussion thundered. The famous passage for
four tympani players at the end of the slow movement raised goosebumps on any
attentive listener. It was a good night for listening.