Kirill Gerstein's electricity impresses at the Hollywood Bowl

Thomas Søndergård’s conducting last night at the Hollywood Bowl could be summed up in a single word: “unity”. Whether in the unity of instrumental coloring, phrasing or flow, it was this tendency that was immediately apparent when he conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic at its first concert of the summer, keeping his cool during an evening that marked the start of one of Southern California’s notorious heatwaves.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade, the program’s curtain-raiser, was a fine backdrop for Søndergård to display his talents. With his skill in forming seamless transitions and an ear for orchestral blend that focused on the mid-range, he imposed an almost symphonic concinnity upon this genial, rhapsodic score, which alternated Grieg-like trollish scampering with sections of dewy lyricism reminiscent of Ketèlbey.

The rest of the program, unfortunately, demonstrated that there were also limitations to Søndergård’s preoccupation with unity. 

Kirill Gerstein, the galvanic soloist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which concluded the first half, delivered a memorable reading marked as much by steely fingerwork as equally steely intellect. Power abounded, but so did contemplativeness, even introspection, neither of those being traits typically associated with this music. It was as if Rachmaninov were re-imagined by Busoni, with each note’s value fully and scrupulously played, yet never dragging the whole for all that.

Throughout, Søndergård was Gerstein’s reliable and ever solicitous partner. Perhaps too much so. The Los Angeles Philharmonic played with its usual precision and suavity. Satiny winds and strings enveloped the lustrous chrome of Gerstein’s pianism. But the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is more than the sum of its potential for producing luscious sonorities. Contrasts in dynamics and texture, as well as that between soloist and orchestra ought to have spurred Søndergård to have served as a more effective conduit for the gigawatts of electricity generated by Gerstein.

Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, which ended the program, contained both the good and less good of Søndergård’s art. He was at his best in the hymn-like Andante, where he confidently stood athwart the composer’s surging themes, whose awesome breadth seem to span from horizon to horizon. Søndergård expertly built the movement’s climaxes, such as that heard at its coda, to a great intensity. They were like the unleashing of a natural force, an illusion that belied the care with which he prepared them. When the music’s mood turned more agitated in the subsequent movements, however, the conductor’s native interpretive centrism sapped the music of its drive. This is music that Prokofiev composed in wartime, after all, and amidst a decline in health that shortly would turn catastrophic besides. Unsurprisingly, these are reflected in the symphony’s sharp juxtapositions of extremes in atmosphere, tempi and timbre. Søndergård instead smoothed these out into an unusually Brahmsian reading. Whether in the screeching aerial artillery at the end of the Scherzo, the somnambulistic waking nightmare of the Adagio, or the strangely frantic joy of the finale, his baton cast few, if any shadows on this troubled music.

From the vantage point of a summer night in 21st-century Los Angeles, Prokofiev’s 20th-century message of hope borne from personal and national despair sounded poignantly remote.