Previn and the Philharmonic : A PROBLEMATIC PARTNERSHIP

Andre Previn has just completed his second official year as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Those ugly celebratory banners have come down--only temporarily, we fear--at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and ballet has usurped the stage.

The orchestral season closed on April 17 with the First Symphony of Sir Edward Elgar, a typical Previn speciality. Some might call it a typical Previn indulgence.

Virtually before the final protracted cadences of Victorian bombast could evaporate in the Music Center air, the maestro and his faithful, sometimes merry, band were off on an ambitious tour of Europe.

This is their first foreign sojourn together. It provides an important if somewhat frantic opportunity for public-relations coups, for glamorous overseas adventures and for all-purpose reputation consolidation. If today is Sunday, this must be Firenze. . . .

Serenity, prosperity and happiness have returned to our most prestigious and best-endowed musical organization. Right?

The leaderless days of shifting values and internal insecurity are past. The listless parade of guest conductors has been drastically reduced. Right?

Discipline and musical joie de vivre have been restored. Previn has brought back sanity and attained the highest possible technical and artistic heights. He has enforced perpetual agitation--the good kind--in our cultural shopping center on the hill. Right?

Well, not exactly right.

Previn is a talented and versatile musician, a personable and persuasive spokesman for his art. Give him that.

He has devoted considerable time, at least by stingy contemporary standards, to Los Angeles. He has involved himself, in varying degrees, in chamber music, in recordings and in modern-music programs when he wasn’t busy on the Pavilion podium. Give him that.

He has banished the aura of awe and mystery that used to be part of the chief conductor’s job description. He comes across as a serious, no-nonsense artist more interested in making music than in cultivating a mystique. Give him that.

He has, in certain ways, expanded the repertory. Give him that.

Nevertheless, all is not well in musical Mudville.

Look at all those empty seats at the beginning of many a Previn program. Look at how the number of empty seats often increases, dramatically, after intermission.

Look at the mail that reaches this office. Many of the subscribers seem to think concerts have become very dull at the Philharmonic.

Look at what happens when certain guest conductors take up the slack.

Kurt Sanderling invokes generalized ecstasy, along with sacred memories of such old-school paragons as Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwaengler and Fritz Busch. The muted flash of young Esa-Pekka Salonen quickens many a pulse out front. The authoritative presence and interpretive insights of Simon Rattle stimulate the collective imagination. The uncompromising brilliance of Pierre Boulez makes even the most difficult music seem attractive, if not altogether accessible.

It is wonderful when guest conductors can elicit hysterical cheers and attract full houses. It is alarming when, at the same time, the resident conductor draws relatively small, somnolent crowds and receives only polite applause.

The problem may not lie completely with Previn. Los Angeles audiences have always been star-struck. They have always tended to respond to images as much as to achievements. When it comes to conductors, they have enjoyed groveling at the feet of bigger-than-life personalities.

They adored Zubin Mehta because he came across as a scowling, brooding, sexy, muscular superman of music. They didn’t mind if his actual music making was often muscle-bound and insensitive.

They adored Carlo Maria Giulini because he came across as a handsome, distinguished, moody, obsessive musical poet. They didn’t mind if his actual music making was sometimes ragged or mannered.

Previn doesn’t give the audience an image to cherish. Although his distant past embraced show-biz pizazz and Hollywood glitz, he has been eager here to deny any traces of flamboyance or, perish the ignoble thought, vulgarity. He hasn’t even brought to Los Angeles the television programs that made him, and serious music, so popular with the masses in Pittsburgh and London.

When he faces the music, he doesn’t dance and prance. He doesn’t emote. He doesn’t worry about putting his best profile sideward.

He beats time, gives cues, shapes lines, sustains balances. Short, bespectacled and seemingly self-effacing, he comes across not as a matinee idol but as an amiable professor. Some unkind observers on both sides of the proscenium have gone so far as to nickname him “the mouse -tro.”

None of these superficial considerations would matter a whit, of course, if Previn could galvanize devotion with his music alone. But he doesn’t often do that. He settles, unwittingly, for respect.

He certainly is capable of neat, thoughtful, carefully detailed work on behalf of the composers he favors. He is also capable, on occasion, of lazy, once-over-lightly performances.

He is a poignant champion of decaying British romanticism and brash Soviet heroism. He performs the French impressionists with clarity and elan. He serves the now fashionable cause of conservative modernism with rare conviction. He earns applause for reviving neglected neo-romantic masterpieces of the recent past.

Unfortunately, he simply doesn’t generate much excitement. Nor does he often convey a distinctly independent perspective of the music at hand.

The music at hand, moreover, isn’t often the music the masses most want to hear. Although Previn favors hearty Haydn and unmannered Mozart, he seems less than comfortable with the milestones of the symphonic repertory. He tends to stray away from Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms. Moreover, on the rare occasions when he cannot avoid the Germanic giants, he tends to be perfunctory.

If he has much of an affinity for the gut-thumping of Richard Strauss or the overwhelming pathos of Richard Wagner, he has kept it pretty much a secret. He seems to prefer mild esoterica, both old and new; and when it comes to grandiose gush, he favors the long-winded, gentlemanly gush of Elgar or Vaughan Williams.

Previn has chosen his guest conductors wisely, apart from a few less than stellar imports (Claus Peter Flor, Sir Charles Groves and David Atherton spring to mind). The guests have helped fill some obvious voids. Still, his policy--if it is that--makes one worry about basic repertory priorities.

His own compositions, unfailingly polite and well crafted, have done little to raise the local temperature. His most pretentious offering--a harmless, eclectic, semi-incidental score to accompany a lightweight political diatribe by Tom Stoppard--was called “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.” (Note the ubiquitous British influence in the spelling of the last word.) The title refers, of course, to the catchwords associated with the lines of the musical staff: E, G, B, D, F. It may, or may not, be significant that one disenchanted member of the Philharmonic always added three irreverent letters after the F when referring to this magnum opus .

As a program builder, Previn has made some strange decisions. His all-Prokofiev evening wallowed in a bit much of a not-always-good thing. His Schoenberg-Mozart-Elgar finale certainly offered a greater appeal to the head than to the heart.

And then there was the historic miscalculation involving Elisabeth Soederstroem. The great Swedish soprano, nearing the end of an illustrious career, was engaged to sing the final scene of Strauss’ “Capriccio,” music in which she has been universally adulated. Unfortunately, Previn alienated the audience at the outset by using a lengthy Mozart symphony for throat-clearing and then introducing his soloist in some formidable, isolated excerpts from Berg’s “Wozzeck.”

The soprano reportedly wanted to soften the blow of all that unexplained dissonance and off-putting Sprechgesang with a little introductory speech. Previn nixed the idea. An alarming audience exodus was his reward.

After intermission, he programmed a lengthy Haydn symphony--in this context, both redundant and evasive. By the time Soederstroem finally got around to her resplendent Straussian piece de resistance , the house was half empty.

It is good to know that Soederstroem has been invited back for next year, though her projected vehicles--some Haydn and Britten--seem oddly chosen. It also is reassuring, in a way, to learn that Previn will be here to conduct 14 subscription programs himself, with a reasonably distinguished list of guests engaged to take over during his absences.

Some of the problems of his first two seasons could fade with time. Conductors can change. Audiences, and their perceptions, can change. Even critics can change.

In the meantime, the question to ponder isn’t whether Previn is good. It is whether he is good enough.