Norrington Offers Beethoven, Sans Spark, at the Bowl

Second-night blues got the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday night, when podium guest Roger Norrington completed his two-concert engagement of this first subscription week of the 1998 summer season at Hollywood Bowl.

Leading a Beethoven program quickly, as is his wont, the British conductor found few of the thrills we know inhabit the Violin Concerto and Seventh Symphony. In particular, the A-major Symphony became utterly charmless: fast but without character, pushy but not bouncy, the entirety lacking jollity, joy and juice.

Where it can be dancey, as in the two closing movements, it sounded merely left-footed, and too fast for genuine exuberance or exhilaration, which depend on the listener’s ability to catch his breath. Where a followable musical continuity, at any tempo, as in the Allegretto, might have given it substance, one heard only regularity--a mechanical boom, chuck-chuck, boom--and no real sense of progress. For the first time in years, this most famous of Allegrettos turned out to be soulless.

The orchestra played willingly, and usually efficiently, yet without finding common threads in what came to seem four disjunct movements.

Norrington also failed to inspire his colleagues in the familiar but deep byways of the Violin Concerto. And the soloist, Philharmonic concertmaster Martin Chalifour, proved--for perhaps the first time in our experience of him--uncharacteristically nervous and tentative in the opening movement, which consequently did not hold together. Chalifour’s strong, firm and attractive tone, for once, turned wispy and slender, and mechanically, his reliability came and went.

In the Larghetto and finale, the violinist then found his familiar, commanding self and gave a noble reading to the slow movement and a characterized account of the Rondo--with just a single moment’s disorientation there.

Since Norrington’s quirky, and rather fast, run-through of “The Star-Spangled Banner” began the evening perfunctorily, one missed a subsequent overture even more.