The Great American Symphony, via Copland

We have a habit in this country of looking for national symbols to use as marketing tools -- the Great American Opera, the Great American Novel, the Great American Breakfast Cereal, or what have you.

In the 1940s, the goal was the Great American Symphony, and Aaron Copland, already the dean of American composers, felt obliged to compete against entries by Roy Harris, William Schuman, Howard Hanson and other mid-century mainstream symphonists.

So Copland came up with the expansive, muscle-flexing, often eloquently uplifting Symphony No. 3 at almost exactly the midpoint of his life (1946). It’s an apotheosis of the Copland voice and manner -- and not only that, it’s a snapshot taken at the zenith of American national pride, World War II having just been won.

Perhaps a victim of its ambition or changing fashions, the Symphony No. 3 never caught on in a big way -- not like Copland’s popular ballet suites. Even the presence of the famous “Fanfare for the Common Man” as the departure point of the finale couldn’t punch it into the basic repertoire. Yet it can still make a big impression in a well-prepared performance, and guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero was able to do just that at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday night.

In Guerrero’s hands, the grand proclamations in the first movement were suitably grand; the rhythmic figures in the second movement had dynamism, sass and a not-unwelcome touch of raucousness.

He had a good grasp of the large-scale structure and tricky syncopations of the merged third and fourth movements -- and the Los Angeles Philharmonic seemed to relish the piece’s familiar style in a not-so-familiar package.

Guerrero displayed the same sure feeling for the art of molding transitions in the two Tchaikovsky pieces before Copland, although the Variations on a Rococo Theme came off with more panache than the “Romeo and Juliet” run-through.

German cellist Johannes Moser was the imaginative soloist in the variations, finding internal conversations, lyrical insights and even humor in the solo part.

Interestingly, the sound -- congested and somewhat tubby in Tchaikovsky -- cleared up considerably in Copland. Was this because of responsive engineering, or maybe it was Copland’s wide-open, built-for-outdoors scoring?