Music and Dance Reviews : Dutoit, Pittsburgh Symphony in Trite Program

The oddball coupling of a French-style Swiss conductor with a German-style American orchestra, touring California this week with an old-fashioned Romantic program, made for a strange experience Wednesday night in Costa Mesa.

Charles Dutoit and the Pittsburgh Symphony brought a hackneyed program to Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, then performed it carefully and with minimal inspiration.

This is not what one might have expected from the usually fiery Dutoit--music director of the Montreal Symphony, which he led in Hollywood Bowl last summer--an important conductor by any standard. Nor would it seem to be exactly typical of the solid and respectable Pittsburgh ensemble, which last visited here in 1982. But the combination of this leader and this orchestra--plus an uninteresting program, reportedly chosen by Dutoit--appeared to threaten the reputations of both parties.

The 91-year-old Pittsburgh Symphony is a second-level, middle-American orchestra with a long German tradition going back to its first music director, the Stuttgart-trained Irish composer-cellist Victor Herbert.

Among its long-term leaders in the subsequent decades have been Klemperer, Reiner and Steinberg. In his tenure, 1976-84, Andre Previn seemed to broaden the orchestra’s musical and repertorial base and lighten its sound; through regular television series, he also gave it a national presence.

As heard Wednesday--the ensemble’s tour this week includes stops at San Francisco, Santa Barbara, El Camino College (tonight) and Ambassador Auditorium (Saturday)--the Pittsburgh orchestra would appear once again to have taken on a heaviness of tone and a brassy sound-profile.

Its playing of Richard Strauss’ “Don Juan,” to open the program, had predictable brightness, strong solo lines, a good flow. But it lacked specific musical characterizations and instrumental finesse, as well as a sense of humor. With a genuine rapport between conductor and orchestra, this might have been a heroic reading; without it, little seemed to happen.

In Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” the program closer, all parts of the orchestra worked hard at displaying their achievements; dynamic contrasts were observed, strong soloism exhibited. But the result, for all its admirable loudness, clear details and good mechanical control, did not engender deep thrills.

Most disappointing, Dutoit’s stolid, well-paced conducting of Robert Schumann’s First Symphony never appeared to get off the ground. Everyone knows the work is cherishable, but this reading failed to show why; the orchestra, playing dutifully, also seemed to be wondering. At the end, with the arrival of intermission, some astute music lovers could be seen leaving the premises.

After the Mussorgsky suite, Dutoit led the orchestra in a single encore, Chabrier’s “Espana.”