This week at the Hollywood Bowl, conductor Stéphane Denève returns to Southern California to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in two different programs.

• Tuesday’s concert features two works not often heard at the Bowl (or anywhere else for that matter):  Stokowski’s “Symphonic Synthesis” of Mussorgsky’s music from Boris Godunov and the lone violin concerto of Julius Conus.  Martin Chalifour, the LA Phil’s Principal Concertmaster, will be the soloist; he has made it a habit to do rarely performed concertos (much like one of his predecessors, David Frisina), and this is another fine example of that.  Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances ends the evening on a more familiar note.
• Thursday’s concert is a compelling program loaded with much more typical Bowl fare, including  Bernstein’s Candide Overture and On the Town, Gershwin’s An American in Paris, and two works by Maurice Ravel:  the Piano Concerto in G with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist and the Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2.

Mr. Denève had been a regular visitor to Los Angeles for a few years, but didn’t appear this last season at Walt Disney Concert Hall, nor is he scheduled to appear this coming 2012/2013 season.  If you want to catch this increasingly prominent conductor, you’ll have to do it this week.

While both concerts look quite interesting, I’ll only be at Thursday night’s performance — that’s because I currently happen to be in Chicago where, asides from trying to dodge lightning storms and other random stuff, I’m planning on being at Ravinia tonight to catch the Tokyo String Quartet’s final Chicago appearance before retiring.  The program includes:  “The Rider” quartet of Haydn; the original string quartet version of  Webern’s Five Movements, Op. 5, along with his Langsamer Satz (“Slow Movement”); and finally, the third “Razumovsky” Quartet of Beethoven.  Let’s hope the weather cooperates.

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Photo credits:

• Ravinia, Tyler Gate:   courtesy of the Ravinia Festival
• Hollywood Bowl:  courtesy of Los Angeles Philharmonic Association