Music Reviews : Glendale Symphony, Pollack in Solid Outing

All too infrequently, pianist Daniel Pollack ventures onto some local platform to give cheer not only to his hard-core fans but to the unsuspecting as well.

He did it again Sunday with Lalo Schifrin and the Glendale Symphony at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, playing Prokofiev’s popular Third Concerto, the one that earned him a bronze medal at the Tchaikovsky International three decades ago and which he later played for the film “The Competition.”

But since virtuosic display is not the end-all and be-all for Pollack, his grandly noble, even transcendent way with the work came as no surprise.

Yes, there was the expected facility, the effortlessly dispatched fistfuls of bravura passages, the percussive force with power to spare, the note-clusters gorgeously clarified. Beyond that, Pollack’s lyricism boasted an uncommon elegance, even a suggestion that the disparate elements were all of a piece. Schifrin and the orchestra provided discreet accompaniment.

Also, in a program of French and French-influence works--Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole” and “Bolero,” Stravinsky’s pre-Diaghilev “Feu d’Artifice” and the Berlioz arrangement of Weber’s “Invitation to the Dance”--one could spot a number of Los Angeles Philharmonic players onstage, conveniently situated following an afternoon concert.

Cellist Daniel Rothmuller, for one, brought his deep, burnished tone and musical suavity to the opening solo in the Weber.

The orchestra shone most brightly in the Stravinsky Here, and in the energized sections of the “Rapsodie,” Schifrin made his maximum impact, reveling in the excitement.