Music Reviews : Temirkanov Returns With Russian Works

Magic is one thing, mystification something else altogether. Yuri Temirkanov deals in both, as the conductor proved again with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Friday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The maestro from St. Petersburg, a.k.a. Leningrad, has become a fixture with the Philharmonic since he made his West Coast debut leading the orchestra at Hollywood Bowl in 1988. For the opening program of a two-week stand this time around, he brought a generous slate of Russian works.

For magic, consider the allusive lyricism Temirkanov generated in the haunted center of the Allegretto of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony. Or the crushing, sustained tension he enforced across the formidable span of the first movement.

Temirkanov made pure energy suffice in the Allegro, and he left the zippy banalities of the finale no more--or less--convincing than any other conductor. But whatever may have been missing in the way of ultimate edge, his was an absorbing and exhausting account.

The Philharmonic has become a first-rate Shostakovich band under many sympathetic conductors in recent seasons. It gave Temirkanov urgent playing, darkly hued but quite capable of steely flash, although several wind soloists had off nights.

Shostakovich’s symphony is the kind of piece that bears great interpretive pressure. Applied to the more straightforward Suite from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Tsar Saltan,” Temirkanov’s highly personal vision produced crude textures and awkward transitions.

Working without a baton, Temirkanov does a peculiar sort of hand jive on the podium, evidently often as much to the befuddlement of the (under-rehearsed?) orchestra as to the audience. Big, pointed cues provoked no apparent response at times, and the somber sea journey of the second movement proved surprisingly dull, all sadly stammered foreground.

Standing in sharp contrast to Temirkanov’s eccentricities was the stolid, solid effort of Sidney Weiss, the Philharmonic concertmaster, in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Endlessly hard-working and technically controlled, Weiss’ performance sounded deliberate and even pokey.

This was true not only of the motor-driven passages but the sublime songs as well. Weiss pushed the main theme of the Andante hard from the very beginning, with wide vibrato and etude shifts, leaving him nowhere to go when the movement crested.

Temirkanov accompanied lovingly if none too neatly, with a suave-sounding, reduced-strings orchestra.