Music critic, Mark Swed starts his review as if he is going to lower the boom on Maestro Pappano, BUT then launches into a MOST complimentary review.

Blood and Guts, compelling force, sheer gusto, a hard-edged intensity, full of bite,
snarling winds all aglow, rich and full-bodied, bold drama, worked splendidly, causing one to leave Disney Hall reeling from Pappano's power.

Pappano presents a larger-than-life Beethoven who grabs you by the lapels and doesn't let go until he has wrestled you to the floor with that string of final chords.

In the best performances so far, Papanos direction especially illuminated the music. But it also knocked you senseless. From the excited cheers that followed, the audience couldn't have been happier to be so clobbered.
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MUSIC REVIEW
OLD -SCHOOL POWER SHAKES NEW HALL

Antonio Pappano, director of the Royal Opera, leads the L.A. Philharmonic
in a trio of exciting performances of works by Verdi, Busoni and Beethoven.

Los Angeles Times
By Mark Swed
Times Music Critic
December 23 2003

Although he became music director of the Royal Opera only last year, Antonio Pappano has already brought a fresh vitality to one of London's most troubled musical institutions.

Given his ambitious adventurousness in his previous post at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels and a gripping, authoritative performance of Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion three years ago, Pappano would have been perfect for something big and bold at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Instead, he led the Philharmonic in a creaky, old-fashioned program Saturday night.

The concert, which contained barely more than an hour's worth of music, began with a blood-and-guts Italian opera overture. It moved on to a forgotten Romantic violin concerto that its composer withdrew because he considered it naive and immature. Beethoven's famous Fifth Symphony was the evening's predictable climax.

But Pappano is a very physical and direct conductor. His point Saturday was simple and direct as well: Exciting music, be it overly familiar or unfamiliar, is exciting music if played with dramatic conviction. And he demonstrated that within the first minute or two. Once Verdi's "Sicilian Vespers" Overture got past its somber introduction (beautifully played, by the way), it took off with such compelling force that the only disappointment was that the entire opera didn't follow.

The revelation, though, was Ferrucio Busoni's Violin Concerto, which came next. Written in 1896, when the composer was 30, it wasn't all that immature. But Busoni, one of the great virtuoso pianists of his generation, was in transition, still finding a deeper calling as a visionary musical seeker.

The concerto is suffused with the showy stuff of his youth. Yet there are hints of the profound musical mystic to come in the opening chordal tune, which looks forward to his monumental piano concerto, and in a slow movement that anticipates the mysterious power his spiritually questing music would develop.

Played with the sheer gusto that Pappano and the soloist, Frank Peter Zimmermann, brought to it, the concerto was hard to resist. The performance made it easy to see why in old age, Busoni could, on the urging of the violinist Joseph Szigeti, develop a fondness for the work and even welcome it back into his catalog as a not-so-bad sin of youth after all...

Following Busoni with Beethoven's Fifth turned out to be, in the end, more interesting programming than one might have expected. Busoni was an Italian, with deep attachments to transcendental German music and philosophy, who settled in Berlin. At the time he wrote his concerto, he was still in the thrall of Italian music. He had just heard, and been impressed by the fluidity of, Verdi's "Falstaff."

But he had also recently been to America and was ready to throw off an old-world shackle or two. He had one antenna pointed toward somber Nordic music. And Berlin called.

Pappano showed all those sides in the sound he was able to get from the Philharmonic. For the Verdi, he had achieved a hard-edged intensity, full of bite. But the Busoni opened with the previously snarling winds all aglow. The Beethoven sound was something else, rich and full-bodied.

Such a meat-and-potatoes Fifth is not the Beethoven in fashion with forward-looking conductors. Pappano used a relatively large orchestra and paid little heed to the lithe phrasing, the play of inner lines, that the early music movement emphasizes. What he was after was bold drama. It was an opera conductor's Beethoven.

And on its own terms, it worked splendidly. One may not have left Disney thinking new thoughts about the Fifth Symphony, as one did about Busoni's concerto. Indeed, one did not leave Disney thinking at all but rather reeling from Pappano's power Beethoven.

This was the larger-than-life Beethoven who grabs you by the lapels with the first heavy ta-ta-ta-tum and doesn't let go until he has wrestled you to the floor with that string of final chords. The immediacy of the Disney sound has proved, in the best performances so far, to specially illuminate music. But it can also knock you senseless. From the excited cheers that followed, the audience couldn't have been happier to be so clobbered.