ZINMAN BRINGS OUT INTENSITY OF SHOSTAKOVICH.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

THURSDAY NIGHT at Disney Hall, for the third week in a row, Shostakovich topped the Los Angeles Philharmonic's musical agenda. Hovering in the background was the vague sense that the orchestra is in the midst of a five-year Shostakovich-symphony cycle.

More important, concertgoers were treated to a first-rate performance of one of the 20th century's great works, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8, courtesy of guest conductor David Zinman.

What this symphony lacks in real-time sprawl (it ran about 65 minutes on this occasion), it more than makes up for in a different kind of length, a seemingly endless line of pinched anguish. Though the work is not without exuberance (what Shostakovich symphony lacks a platoon of percussionists?) this is, at best, bittersweet music, full of lament and resignation.

Interpreting Shostakovich's symphonies is a dangerous game in a world where the veracity of the composer's putative autobiography, ``Testimony,'' remains debatable. Still, it was pretty clear that Zinman, since 1995 the music director of Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra, viewed this score as a vast lachrymose canvas.

The performance was distinguished on many levels - but perhaps most of all by intense focus. In the symphony's fourth and penultimate movement, a couple, perhaps overcome by the work's unrelenting intensity, attempted to leave the auditorium. The woman made it to the door, but her companion fell backward on a set of steps, landing flat. Gasps erupted from the audience, but nothing stopped the music. And though various orchestra members craned their necks to see the spectacle, Zinman didn't even flinch.

By then, he was surely in a zone, as all caught up in this extraordinary performance must have been. The orchestra was with him at every turn, following his economical gestures with like concentration. The strings sounded especially characterful on this night, the double basses eerily rumbling as the violins offered long, arcing lines. The brass players, too, distinguished themselves, out in force (four trombones) and sounding it. And the percussionists had the kind of field day only Disney Hall, and Shostakovich, can afford.

Altogether forgettable was the program opener, Beethoven's zesty and delightful Third Piano Concerto with Alfred Brendel at the keyboard. Zinman and the orchestra offered plenty of pep and smooth music-making. (Zinman's set of Beethoven symphonies with the Tonhalle has earned critical raves.) But the pianist was in another world - and a generally dull one at that.

Brendel is a probing and perceptive musical thinker, but his sober playing sometimes fails to gratify. He is lately prone to muddy articulation and clangorous fortissimos. Here his control of dynamics was admirable. He occasionally produced a jewel-like, liquid tone. Yet the concerto's outer movement lacked spirit and wit. And the slow movement, though more suited to Brendel's gifts, was unfortunately marred by a veritable bedroom farce of doors opening and closing as latecomers put their own interests above the pianist's and the music's.

DAVID ZINMAN CONDUCTS THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC WITH ALFRED BRENDEL - Three stars

What: Guest conductor David Zinman and the L.A. Philharmonic perform Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8 on a program also featuring Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto with Alfred Brendel.

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

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

Tickets: $15 to $120. [phone]; laphil.com.

In a nutshell: Zinman and the orchestra movingly master one of Shostakovich's most recalcitrant scores, though Brendel's dull Beethoven disappoints.

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Alfred Brendel produced a dynamically rich yet mundane rendition of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto.