BOWL

Yuri Temirkanov, who conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood
Bowl on Tuesday night — the fourth of his five appearances here — remains
one of the most interesting of contemporary conductors. Perhaps
“interesting” conducting wasn’t exactly what Tuesday night’s program called
for, however.It was another of those solid, chestnut-studded programs: Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo
and Juliet” Overture, Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” and
that old inevitable, Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” junk food at its
tastiest. Nikolai Petrov was the pianist in the Rachmaninoff, no better and no
worse than his playing at his Ambassador recital a few seasons back — a
recital that somehow lingers in the memory as almost a textbook essay in
dullness.Given the minimal intellectual demands of this program, a case could be made
for a fairly straightforward, zippy approach to all three works. Nothing like
that was forthcoming, however. Temirkanov obviously takes considerable
pleasure in imposing his own stamp upon everything he plays, an approach that
used to be more common among conductors than it is in these electronic days.
The range of tempos in both the Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov works was
extreme: slowness to the point of an imperceptible ooze, speed to violate all
local traffic laws.The conductor has the technique to make all this work, and so, in his deadpan
way, did the pianist. Barring the allowable quota of bloopers (mostly in the
brass) it was a pretty good sounding program. But you could easily mistake
these works, under Temirkanov’s heavy hands, for something more serious than
their real nature. Nothing seemed to soar…Except, of course, the usual skyful of intrusions: a veritable regatta during
the Rachmaninoff, with two small planes flying directly overhead and a couple
of helicopters within easy earshot. A decent-sized crowd, 11623 strong, stayed
to cheer at the end. At that, they had reason; it’s hard to spoil
“Scheherazade.”