Hearty German fare fails to stick to ribs

New shell or old shell, the program at the Hollywood Bowl looked very familiar Thursday night -- meat-and-potatoes 19th century German classics, nothing fancy, served up straight.

Actually, though, if you look at the whole so-called Classical Tuesday and Thursday schedule this summer, the standard overture-concerto-symphony routine is a disappearing species, giving way to more imaginative combinations. So perhaps this evening should be regarded as a living museum, a remnant of Bowl seasons of the past.

Those who have never heard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman� Overture, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto or Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 -- and that probably included most of the audience of 7,619 -- got a decent introduction, at least.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic played very well, with no signs of midsummer doldrums audible, and outgoing assistant conductor Yasuo Shinozaki mostly stayed out of the orchestra’s way.

Even the amplification had noticeably better presence than was the case only two weeks ago, cranked down in volume so that more natural acoustic sound came through (at least to the garden boxes).

Yet these were not interpretations that are likely to stay in the memory for very long. The Wagner was pretty good, with just enough driving rhythm to pass, and some broadening of the tempos in the right places. Mendelssohn emerged a bit on the slow side, a relaxed, friendly stroll in the park with concertmaster Alexander Treger delivering a slender, attractive tone with plenty of technique to get through the hurdles. Sometimes, the piece’s structure drifted distractedly in the first movement, and the orchestra was not always in sync with the soloist in the third movement, yet things mostly fit together.

In Brahms, Shinozaki played it absolutely straight, with no tempos deviating from the middle of the road, working with the lean, almost classical sound from the strings that the boss, Esa-Pekka Salonen, has cultivated. Yet those who had hoped that the new shell would be free of the annoying echoes that plagued the old one were disheartened again. Just about every isolated massive chord in the finale was inevitably followed by a corresponding rebound from up front.