Review: Excitement in the air wanes in the heat during performance by Israeli conductor Lahav Shani

In watching the young Israeli conductor Lahav Shani at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, one got the feeling that we have been down this road before.

Shani won first prize at the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra’s 2013 Gustav Mahler conducting competition — the same one that launched the international career of Los Angeles Philharmonic music and artistic director Gustavo Dudamel. Like Dudamel, Shani followed up with a flurry of European gigs and his U.S. debut at the Bowl. Like Dudamel, he has a youthful shock of dark, bushy hair and conducts with considerable physicality. Like Dudamel, he conducts without a score. And he’s 26.

Ah, it’s that magic age, 26, one that historically resonates with the L.A. Philharmonic. Zubin Mehta became its music director at 26. Simon Rattle and Myung-Whun Chung were hired as principal guest conductor and assistant conductor, respectively, at 26. Esa-Pekka Salonen made his U.S. debut with the Phil at 26, and yes, Dudamel became music director-designate at 26.

Coincidence? Most likely. Still, it’s spooky the way that number keeps cropping up.

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Alas, other stars weren’t aligned for Shani to make a maximum impact. The late-summer night was hot and uncomfortable in the Bowl, with the musicians in shirtsleeves, and the repertoire was standard-issue stuff on short rehearsal time. That combination often spells doldrums — and in stretches, this seemed to be the case.

Shani started with Glinka’s Overture to “Ruslan and Ludmila,” which took off merrily like a rocket, as it should. Then the 28-year-old Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili came out in a red chiffon gown with gold sequins and proceeded to slice up Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” into several disconnected episodes in search of a whole.

The extroverted variations thundered and banged tempestuously; the introverted ones drifted and melted dreamily into the warm night air, not unlike Buniatishvili’s performance of the Chopin Concerto No. 2 in Disney Hall last year, sometimes bringing matters to a dead halt. Buniatishvili has a lovely touch and plenty of temperament. She just overdid it and exaggerated the extremes on Tuesday, sometimes in conflict with what the orchestra was doing. Listen to Rachmaninoff’s own recording of his piece, which is pretty straightforward and fast by today’s relaxed standards, and you’ll hear all the emotion and fantasy you would want.

Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony has been played so many times that it’s difficult to see how someone can make a big first impression with it anymore. Shani basically drove it at conventional moderate tempos, with crisp attacks in the Scherzo and a Largo where the pauses near the end seemed like eternities. The video monitors caught Shani always in motion, sometimes swaying to the rhythms; the audio speakers caught the orchestra playing professionally but without much electricity. An estimated 8,907 listeners took it in.

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