MUSIC REVIEWS : Foster Returns With Myrow’s ‘Frontiers’

Two years before he gave his first full-length program, making his major-orchestra debut, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Lawrence Foster conducted the Philharmonic in music of Fredric Myrow.

That was in 1965, when, as a young assistant to the also-young Zubin Mehta, Foster presided over Myrow’s Symphonic Variations on an otherwise Mehta-led subscription concert in the Pavilion of the Music Center.

Twenty-eight years later, Foster, now 51 and a frequent guest- conductor at the Philharmonic, still champions the music of his contemporary and colleague.

Returning to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for a two-week visit, Wednesday night Foster led the West Coast premiere of Myrow’s “Frontiers,” which he had introduced two years ago at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado.

“Frontiers” is a large-scale, apparently sprawling, collagelike piece in a generic 20th-Century style, sometimes chaotic, usually engaging, often portentous. It uses a full symphonic complement, including a large number of percussion instruments, resourcefully through what the composer calls a “suite of four ‘movies for the ear.’ ”

Descriptive, colorful and eclectic, the 29-minute work seems to have much to recommend it, yet little originality.

Its compulsive behavior--long, drawn-out, ascending climaxes ending in cathartic orchestral blasts, for example--can be fascinating. Still, one senses a lack of depth lurking in its monochrome. As conducted thoroughly by Foster, and played gamely by the Philharmonic, it seemed to be receiving fair treatment.

In the surrounding program, Ravel and Prokofiev got the same.

Alexander Toradze was the driving force in the Russian composer’s popular Piano Concerto No. 3, repeating his previous successes with it. Toradze leaves no 16th-note uncolored or pianissimo passage unwhispered or emotional peak unscaled in this celebrated test-piece; he also scores all of its many musical points without neglect. His performance on Wednesday became stunning.

At the end of the evening, Foster & Co. produced a respectable, well-gauged and unusually controlled reading of Ravel’s famous “Bolero.”

At the beginning, they did better: They accomplished a splendidly clarified, fluent, titillating and perfectly balanced performance of the same composer’s suite, “Le Tombeau de Couperin.”