KAHANE PLAYS MOZART : DAVID ZINMAN TAKES THE PODIUM AT BOWL

David Zinman’s first concert of the Hollywood Bowl season didn’t begin with much promise Tuesday night.

The conductor of the Baltimore Symphony opened an evening of familiar hits with a performance of Richard Strauss’ “Don Juan” that could best be described as businesslike. It was brisk, neat, sensible and perfunctory. Airplanes added a nasty alto ostinato.

The aesthetic temperature rose dramatically, however, when Jeffrey Kahane joined the visiting maestro and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Mozart’s C-major Concerto, K. 467. The young pianist played with refreshing poise and easy eloquence.

Kahane juggled impetuosity and delicacy impeccably in the opening Allegro. He conveyed the moonstruck lyricism of the oversold Andante without exaggerating the affect and raced with manly grace through the climactic Allegro vivace.

Unlike the lazy modern virtuosos who content themselves with hand-me-down cadenzas, Kahane wrote his own: a curiously Romantic indulgence for the first movement that tended to modulate all over the place, and a lovely network of rippling, contrapuntal flourishes for the finale.

Zinman provided the complement of pliant, sensitive support.

After intermission, he brought warmth and subtlety--even in the wide open spaces--to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8. He delineated the rhapsodic rhetoric with taut control, defined the formal structure with unusual logic, illuminated orchestral detail with telling clarity.

Restraint, in this case, did not preclude poignance. The Philharmonic responded with welcome precision and dynamic finesse.

An innocent audience of 10,812 applauded after every movement.