CONDUCTOR OUTSHINES MIDORI.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

THURSDAY'S Los Angeles Philharmonic program promised the best of both worlds - a returning friend and a fresh face. And, indeed, hearing French conductor Stephane Deneve, in his debut with the orchestra, lead Beethoven's Violin Concerto and suites from Gabriel Faure's ``Pelleas et Melisande'' and Henri Roussel's ``Bacchus et Ariane'' proved an unmitigated treat. Unfortunately, Midori's dutiful performance of the concerto was disappointing.

Despite her fame, Midori has long divided music lovers. For some, this diminutive former prodigy, now 33, is a titanic technician, poised and fearless on stage and inclined toward no-nonsense yet edgy interpretations. But others regard her composure as faceless muscle; brawn and brains, to be sure, but no heart.

On this occasion, Midori did not dominate the performance. Her sound was often meek, as though the orchestra intimidated her. Equally discomfitting, her tone was dry and her phrasing uninflected. In her better moments, like the cadenzas and the latter part of the slow movement, she revealed vigor and mastery, but in the zippy Rondo finale, she was largely placid.

Not so Deneve, who conducted as though his life depended on it. The incoming music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Deneve, 33, comes to Los Angeles largely unheralded, but it won't be that way when he returns, which is practically inevitable given the playing he elicited from the Philharmonic.

Gravity is expected in Beethoven's concerto, but the tightly coiled energy Deneve summoned was something else entirely. Power was tempered with discipline, and cohesion and balance emerged as prime virtues. Thus the Philharmonic's splendid woodwinds were unusually audible on this occasion. And however forceful the orchestra sounded when the soloist was out of the picture, Midori was faithfully supported when she played.

Still, one felt that Deneve - who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to legendary Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg - relished the freedom that came with the program's second half, two French works expressing mythic love stories in purely musical terms.

Faure's ``Pelleas et Melisande'' suite comes from incidental music he composed for a London production of Maurice Maeterlinck's groundbreaking symbolist drama - music, not incidentally, that had its premiere before Claude Debussy's famous opera of the same name.

This ethereal score found an ideal interpreter in Deneve, who got the Philharmonic to ``breathe'' the music. Especially lovely were the efforts of harpist Lou Anne Neill and principal flutist Janet Ferguson, in the perfumed Sicilienne, and the hushed depicting of Melisande's death.

Even more impressive was a polished yet feral version of Roussel's ``Bacchus et Ariane'' Suite No. 2. Here, Deneve proved a master of musical quick-change, handling the score's brutish aspects as effectively as the refined ones and showing no strain in the jazzy episodes. As for the bring-down-the-house finale, the conductor expertly demonstrated the art of controlled mania.

MIDORI - Three stars

What: Stephane Deneve conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program of Beethoven's Violin Concerto performed by Midori and suites by Gabriel Faure and Henri Roussel.

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8 tonight and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets: $15 to $125. [phone]. www.laphil.com.

In a nutshell: In a notable debut, a French conductor gets rousing performances from the orchestra, even as violin soloist Midori remains largely detached.