MUSIC REVIEW : <i> Perestroika </i> Reunion at Bowl Opening

No floating barrage of balloons punctuated the introductory flourishes at the official opening of the Hollywood Bowl season Tuesday night. The sky remained empty. Convention was scorned.

A slip in the program magazine explained that the festive ritual of hot air and rubber was being abandoned “because of dangers to the ecology and environment.” Very sensible.

Instead, the powers behind the symphonies under the stars offered a subtle celebration of perestroika . It began with a very ponderous, very solemn, very appreciative performance of our national anthem led by Yuri Temirkanov, music director of the Leningrad Philharmonic.

Next the visiting maestro majestically guided the otherwise leaderless Los Angeles Philharmonic through Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture. Then came the main attraction: Vladimir Feltsman.

Feltsman, you will recall, was a popular pianist in the Soviet Union until 1979, when he applied for an immigration visa. At that time he became a professional nonperson. His engagements were canceled, his recordings withdrawn. He endured eight years of artistic isolation before managing to leave in 1987.

How, one had to wonder, would this Soviet outcast collaborate with an illustrative representative of the current Soviet Establishment? Apparently there was no problem.

Responding to formal queries, Feltsman said during intermission that he was very happy to be be able to play again under Temirkanov after a 15-year hiatus.

Temirkanov, for his part, was diplomatically enigmatic. “I do not consider Feltsman an emigre,” he stated. “I just consider him someone who lives somewhere else now. I don’t worry about where a person lives, only about how he plays.”

And how did he play on this occasion? Competently.

Some observers have been eager to hail Feltsman as a miraculous fusion of Horowitz and Rubinstein. Extra-musical publicity has a curious way of inflating expectations and coloring impressions. This observer continues to find him a rather stolid musician with a rather solid technique. The magic remains elusive.

His performance of the Fourth Beethoven Concerto proved more notable for sociopolitical achievement than for specific artistic insight. He approached the noble challenge with intelligent restraint. Although he smudged some of the bravura passages, he obviously savored the advantage of clarity.

This was a fluent, carefully shaded, eminently coherent interpretation. What it lacked, alas, was flair. The lyrical flights did not soar. The dramatic outbursts did not roar. The introspective passages did not sigh. Ultimately, Feltsman gave us efficient prose but dutiful poetry.

His countryman on the podium provided sensitive, propulsive accompaniment. The amplification system provided a raucous acoustical ambience.

Nancy Reagan led an audience of 11,586 in providing hearty applause (while her husband worked a ballgame a few miles down the freeway). Perhaps the presidential presence represented something of an aesthetic quid pro quo. After all, Raisa Gorbachev--together with her husband--recently bestowed emphatic glasnost approval upon an American pianist in Moscow: Van Cliburn.

After intermission, Temirkanov returned for an obligatory Russian showpiece. Ignoring the automatic-pilot system favored by many of his Western colleagues, he brought brooding intensity, strident impetuosity and thunderous passion to Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. The rhetoric actually seemed spontaneous.

The pizzicato ostinato of the third movement has seldom sounded so aptly casual. The final Allegro con fuoco has seldom sounded so fiery. The Philharmonic, which often sleepwalks through this music, responded to Temirkanov’s precise urgings with extraordinary zeal.

Never underestimate the power of native conviction.