COMPOSER MAYUZUMI CONDUCTS : JAPANESE PHILHARMONIC AT THE MUSIC CENTER

The “East Meets West” concert offered Tuesday evening by the Japanese Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles at the Music Center Pavilion tackled directly one of the classic dilemmas of aesthetics--what, if any, is the relationship between sound and emotional or spiritual states?

According to many contemporary aestheticians, such states in music are largely--if not exclusively--a matter of cultural convention. Music sounds “sad,” for example, because we have learned a symbol, not because of any inherent, universal poignance in the tones themselves.

Toshiro Mayuzumi’s position on this seems somewhat ambivalent. In translated oral comments Tuesday, the 58-year-old composer decried the subjectivism that he finds endemic in Western music today. He belives that all music is based on religion, and if his synopsis of Western music history was pure myth, his plea for a sense of transcendence was understandable.

Mayuzumi said that the second movement of his “Mandala” Symphony depicts the compassion of Buddha. Though there are intimations of Oriental modes in his music, it is thoroughly accessible to the Western ear, relying on a real flair for Stravinskyan orchestration and ostinatos.

But the “compassion” in it completely eluded at least one listener. In Western stereotypes, it was occasionally jaunty, and more often ominous or nervous.

In Mayuzumi’s setting of “Hannya Shinkyo,” doctrinal purity was surely insured with the presence on stage of 17 Buddhist priests reciting the sutra in rhythmic monotone. But Mayuzumi’s heavily iterative accompaniment was undermined by an unfortunate resemblance to the March from “Star Wars.”

Mayuzumi conducted his own works with expressive authority. The strings of the relatively small ensemble--about 60 members--were dispersed in a double orchestra setup, for no clear musical reason.

Akira Kikukawa, the founder and director of the 26-year-old orchestra, led the opening piece, “Haru no Umi” by Michio Miyagi. This agreeable, eight-minute tone poem featured Yoko Awaya, Meg Barry, and Masa Brown, playing kotos--a type of Japanese dulcimer--in supple unison throughout.

After intermission, Kikukawa returned the orchestra to a regular setup for Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. The winds routinely overpowered the small string contingent, and ensemble details were seldom as neat as possible. But the performance had an earnest energy, and a nice feeling of movement in the main themes.