Music Review : Edwards Sparkles at Bowl in Lesser Berlioz, Tchaikovsky

One look at the program Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl was enough to cause suspicion. Something was going on. The Overture to “Les Francs-Juges” by Berlioz and the Symphony No. 2, “Little Russian,” by Tchaikovsky--these aren’t the sort of staples that are in every conductor’s hat, to be pulled out at a moment’s notice. Perhaps conductor Sian Edwards had a special affinity for these works, an expertise, a hankering.

She did. What we heard in her performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (her second appearance of the week, before 10,627) was a conductor with strong ideas about how this music should go. What we saw was a conductor with a clear, disciplined baton technique that gave her the ability to get those ideas across. These weren’t run-throughs; they were interpretations.

The performance of Tchaikovsky’s Second proved especially memorable. Imagine a conductor holding back in Tchaikovsky. Imagine elegance, lightness, clarity of texture. Even during the potentially bombastic climaxes she kept tempos propulsive, the rhetoric crisp. Everything seemed in keeping with this music’s basic simplicity. You could dance to it, could almost taste its flavorful orchestration. And the Philharmonic played with alertness and verve.

Edwards opened with the Berlioz, a somewhat clunky but fascinating early work, filled with his usual odd shapes, weird colors, colossal pronouncements. She expertly uncovered its eccentricities, gave a sweet smoothness to the tune and paced its dramatic flow.

Between the gems came the warhorse, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with pianist Xiang-Dong Kong. His technique was secure, certainly, and the notes fell in the right places. He managed some effective, chamber-music delicacies in the strumming arpeggios of the second movement. But elsewhere the thing failed to spark. Carefulness, deliberateness and perhaps a little too much thinking prevailed where a pure emotionalism is called for. Edwards and Philharmonic accompanied with general lethargy. Oh well. Can’t have everything.