As the season-opening concert of your brand new music director – your first in some 35 years – it was an entirely anticlimactic evening on Thursday at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.
But then, let us not be overly critical. Conductor Alexander Shelley – Pacific Symphony’s new music director, replacing Carl St.Clair – is already fairly familiar to local audiences after a year serving as music director-designate. He needs no introduction, at least for many of us.
Besides, the concert was really one of those season opening shindigs, a one-off, with a starry soloist hogging the spotlight, in this case violinist Joshua Bell, and a kind of party agenda.
(What’s more, for sticklers, Shelley had already conducted his first concert as music director over the summer, when he brought the orchestra to the Festival Napa Valley.)
Anyway, here’s how Thursday’s concert went. First, a promo video projected on the big screen above the stage (emoji of your choosing here), then Shelley is introduced and speaks for several minutes, about the upcoming season, the night’s program (“a taster menu”) and the special pleasure it is for us to all come to together to share live music performed by human beings. Shelley would give us spoken programs notes throughout the evening, and he’s a fine public speaker, but overall, there was too much talk.
Launching the musical proceedings, Jessie Montgomery’s “Banner,” a kind of collage on “The Star Spangled Banner,” mixing modernistic and folksy styles, proved not quite the jolly opener required in the situation. As American music was a theme of the evening (as it will be for the season), I would have suggested, say, Charles Ives’s Variations on “America” in its stead.
Then, Bell emerged to play a movement from a work he commissioned, a multi-composer piece called “The Elements.” “Earth” by Kevin Puts features a pretty, long-limbed tune bracketing a faster minimalistic passage, and it also didn’t seem to get the concert going yet.
The meat finally came with Bell playing Edouard Lalo’s “Symphonie espagnole,” an old chestnut once performed by the likes of Heifetz, Milstein and Ricci, but not encountered much anymore. It’s a good piece and it was good to hear it again. But Bell didn’t completely have its measure, pushing it too hard and consistently, missing for the most part its simplicity, elegance and charm. The virtuosity was evident, yes, but there’s more to this piece. And sometimes less: You don’t necessarily have to fuss over every phrase.
The orchestra accompanied him in a mundane fashion. It didn’t sound as sharp as it has previously sounded under Shelley all evening, actually, and in fact one noticed a lot of new faces in the group. Some were new members, no doubt. Others must have been subs.
At any rate, with Bell out of the way after intermission, the orchestra settled down some and gave enjoyable readings of a sampler second half. The program in toto was all-American (if, like Shelley, you include Korngold and Bartók, who both lived here for a time, as Americans) excepting the Lalo, and listed three women composers to boot.
Bernstein’s Overture to “Candide” received a boisterous run-through. Joan Tower’s “Sixth Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” fascinated with its twists, twitters and swirls and was beautifully orchestrated. Florence Price’s Andante Moderato was pure loveliness, noticeably American in tone, but not selling it.
Korngold’s suite from the movie “Kings Row” (Ronald Reagan is in it) was gorgeous and nicely honed for the concert stage, and rather glaringly revealed that a certain modern film composer had, well, borrowed from it for at least two of his most famous themes. Shelley reported that Korngold’s grandson and great granddaughter were in attendance.
Bartók’s “Romanian Folk Dances” delighted in a performance both delicate and sizzling. Gershwin’s Overture to “Girl Crazy” wound things up. The man could write a tune.
Incidentally, one noticed that the orchestra included only six double basses on Thursday. You need at least eight for an orchestra this size, thus the brightness in tone that prevailed. One also noticed that Shelley conducted the entire second half without score – these must be “party pieces” for him.
Next week Shelley and company are on to more serious things, with three performances of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. We will review.
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