Harth-Bedoya Makes the Night Dance at the Hollywood Bowl

What made it likable was the rhythmic lilt. But what made it satisfying was more important. Fate, for once, was no big deal. Tchaikovsky's turbulent tale has been often told. He began the symphony in 1876 shortly after meeting a generous patron, Nadezhda von Meck, a widow who supported him and served as a confidante. The composer, who was closeted in homophobic Russia, finished the score the following year, having just endured a brief and disastrous marriage to another woman. The emotional roller coaster left him practically psychotic.

The composer's way out of madness, he wrote to Von Meck, was to portray fate as an F- minor brass fanfare that rises from the depths and influences the symphonic development for 40 minutes. The work isn't so much an engineered musical argument as a free-flowing representation of a melancholy journey, with elusive hope always around the next corner.

But Harth-Bedoya does not have a gloomy Russian soul. Rather, the Peruvian conductor, as composer Osvaldo Golijov once said, naturally balances earth, air, fire and water. He never looks troubled on the podium. He has a square jaw, a winning smile and a broad stick technique. He doesn't appear to mold phrases and finesse details so much as to open the tap and let the music pour out.