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Abbado Bursts In Like a Force of Nature

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TIMES MUSIC CRITIC

Poppies in Lancaster. The coast aflame in bright splashes of yellow and bold purples. Night-blooming jasmine scenting our evenings. Spring, even in seasonless Southern California, breaks out, awakening us to the great outdoors we take for granted.

And Roberto Abbado, who appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the first time Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, might be viewed as the orchestra’s spring gift. Slim, attractive, confident and with a winning smile, the young Italian conductor has a reputation for being a bright new star. He came with an ambitious program that revolved around nature, culminating in “An Alpine Symphony,” Richard Strauss’ monumentally over-the-top, so to speak, symphonic poem.

The nephew of Claudio Abbado and already well known for his opera recordings, Roberto Abbado comes with high expectations. He was a contender in the recent searches for music director at the Houston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra. Now he appears to be a dark horse candidate for the Boston Symphony.

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In Los Angeles, Abbado attempted the seemingly impossible, by beginning the evening with Webern’s Variations and ending it with the “Alpine Symphony.” The connection between these two 20th century works is nature and war. Strauss and Webern both looked to the Alps for spiritual sustenance. Webern, the miniaturist, was the tiny poet in awe of the looming peaks; Strauss, the maximalist, found transcendence in associating himself with the grandeur of the ascent and in becoming one with the mountains.

Thus Strauss’ tone poem is a 50-minute musical Imax escapade, bounding along babbling brooks, spraying waterfalls, flowery meadows, thickets and brush. It paints--in tone--the sunrise, a momentous storm, sunset and night. It is a massive score for massive orchestra in which the strings fight eight horns, four trumpets, four trombones, two tubas, multiple winds, much percussion and an organ. Strauss wrote it in Germany in 1915; it is for the conductor to decide whether it was written as an escape from war or a paean to conquering heroes.

Webern’s Variations is the opposite in every way imaginable, a seventh as long as “An Alpine Symphony” and at least that much subtler, that much quieter and less predictable. Written in Vienna in 1940, it avoids the swirl of world events, losing itself in a stark four-note motive that is transferred from individual instrument to instrument, but never twice exactly the same. Everything in Webern is compressed, seeing the small in the large, the tree in the leaf. One listens to Webern in slow motion. One listens to Strauss at his most grandiose in leisure.

We may understand the relativity of time intellectually, but we don’t easily experience it as listeners. Nor did the Philharmonic comfortably reproduce it as players. The Webern sounded like personal moments from soloists in the orchestra intent on expressing their fragments but not on responding to what they heard from others. Abbado pushed with blunt forward motion, holding the music together but not appreciating its teeming life underneath--this is the mountain viewed from an SUV. The profound gradations of dynamics were only approximate. The performance sounded under-prepared.

The Strauss was equally pushed forward and blunt, the SUV here practically tearing up the mountain. Abbado has fine organizational skills, and he held tight onto a score that wants to burst the seams at practically any moment. But the Philharmonic sounded uncharacteristically steely, despite some impressive brass playing.

In between Webern and Strauss came the relaxation of relatively early Mozart, with the Violin Concerto No. 4. Cho-Liang Lin replaced the scheduled soloists, Pamela Frank, who has been sidelined by a hand injury. Abbado’s Mozart is on the big side, sharply etched but slightly too large for Lin, who is an elegant, straightforward player. So if the violinist’s tone turned slightly hard, that may have been in compensation. Still, it was Lin (the new head of La Jolla Chamber Music’s summer festival) who, in making Mozart bloom, brought us closest to nature.

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The Los Angeles Philharmonic program repeats tonight at 8, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. $10-$70, (323) 850-2000.

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