TWO WEEKS OF BRAHMS A LULLABY FOR CONCERTGOERS.

Byline: David Mermelstein

Correspondent

Many things can legitimately be called a season highlight -- a premiere, a sprawling choral work that rarely gets performed, a multimedia event, a guest appearance by a young and dashing conductor.

For some, though, a season highlight is that seemingly most innocuous of things: the return of a fabled maestro to lead pillars of the standard repertory.

For those so inclined, the now-regular visits of Christoph von Dohnanyi guest conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic are red-letter days. The Berlin-born Dohnanyi, 77, is a fixture in European concert halls and opera houses, but he is best-known in America for leading the Cleveland Orchestra from 1984 to 2002.

Since the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Dohnanyi has appeared with the Philharmonic in a series of increasingly fruitful collaborations. Now he is in Los Angeles for two weeks, leading all four Brahms symphonies -- Symphonies One and Three this weekend, and Symphonies Two and Four next.

The purity of these programs is startling. No concertos, no overtures, no new music. No muss, no fuss, you might say.

Hipsters beware: This is old-time music mainlined.

And what bliss it is! Thursday's concert opened with the Third Symphony, perhaps because Dohnanyi felt that concluding the program with this work's fade-away finale would prove anti-climatic. In any event, it was a revelatory performance, even more so than his potent account of the First.

With his repeated visits, Dohnanyi is clearly building rapport with the orchestra. And he must be feeling right at home, for he is altering the orchestra's sound. Not in the traditional way, by rearranging the placement of various string choirs, but rather by lowering the orchestra's risers. Except for very slightly elevating the woodwinds and brasses, the players are evenly distributed across a flat stage.

The result is startling and immediately apparent. With Disney Hall's vaunted clarity undiminished, there is homogeneity to the massed sound, something hitherto unheard in the space. Moreover, the brasses sound mellower, the woodwinds airier, the strings crisper.

Only part of this magic can be attributed to the hall, of course. The rest is Dohnanyi's sure hand and probing intelligence. The conductor's tempos were not remarkable; he stuck pretty much to what Brahms indicated. But within each movement, he found plenty of opportunities for individual expression.

And so, previously unappreciated inner voices revealed themselves, and moments of reflection crept up unawares. Abiding tenderness alternated with Sturm und Drang at various points.

Yet Dohnanyi made it all sound of a piece. His interpretations, though not radical re-explorations, made the familiar sound fresh. He pointed out new vistas along well-traveled roads.

One especially noteworthy aspect of these readings was Dohnanyi's ability to find the drama in the music's quietest sections. The Third Symphony is well-known for the gentle conclusions to its four movements, but in Dohnanyi's hands, these endings had all the power of the last moments of a great Wagner opera.

When forceful surges were required, as in parts of the First Symphony, the conductor produced them just as easily, revealing a surprising elasticity in the Philharmonic's sound. But raw power had no place here, and so in the First Symphony's exciting finale, longing could be heard from the brasses, the trombones in particular.

CHRISTOPH VON DOHNANYI CONDUCTS THE L.A. PHILHARMONIC - Four stars

What: Guest conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi leads the Philharmonic in Brahms' Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3.

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

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

Tickets: $15 to $135. [phone] or www.laphil.com.

In a nutshell: The former longtime music director of the Cleveland Orchestra brings a lifetime of experience to his knowing interpretations -- in this case, the first half of a two-week Brahms symphony cycle.

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Christoph von Dohnanyi leads the L.A. Philharmonic in an all-Brahms program.