Hollywood Bowl Orchestra Shines in Classical Program

With the Los Angeles Philharmonic still in Europe on tour this week, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra has had its mettle tested in the strictly classical music arena. Thursday night at Hollywood Bowl, under the baton of John Mauceri, the orchestra achieved some notable results.

Not that the performances on view were flawless, but, at their best, they went beyond the merely tidy run-throughs that this orchestra sometimes offers.

On the first half of the program, Mauceri and ensemble were abetted considerably by the presence of the 32-year-old British pianist Stephen Hough, playing the work in which he had made his Bowl debut in 1985, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Hough gave a reading at once nonchalant and meticulously finished. Crisply, elegantly articulated, relaxed in its virtuosity, ample and unhurried in its lyricism, it unfolded with perfect logic and kittenish charm.

Although the piano amplification wasn’t as clear as it should and can be, that turned out to be no great demerit. The orchestra seemed to catch Hough’s spirit.

After intermission, in the first three-quarters of Saint-Saens’ “Organ” Symphony, Mauceri took a careful and steady approach that for the most part worked. The music bloomed naturally as the conductor kept the slowish pace graceful, the momentum building, the ensemble nicely balanced.

The finale proper fell short of these marks--there was a labored quality to its bombastic goings on--and the organ proved sometimes too loud, sometimes too rattling. Nevertheless, this was a clearly vital and accomplished account. Alexander Frey, played the organ part cleanly.

The concert, attended by 10,841 listeners, opened with Franz Waxman’s Ride of the Cossacks from the 1962 film “Taras Bulba,” which sounded like Khachaturian on a bad day--and that’s pretty bad.