MUSIC REVIEW : Symphonic Night of Overkill Had a Few Choice Moments

Describing Thursday evening’s San Diego Symphony concert according to the categories of radio broadcasting, the program came dangerously close to easy listening. Between Richard Strauss’ youthful “Burleske for Piano and Orchestra”--a thematic garage sale if there ever was one--and the tuneful excesses of Prokofiev’s Suite from “Romeo and Juliet,” it proved to be an evening of melodic overkill at Symphony Hall.

Fortunately, there were a few rewards for the discriminating listener, chief of which was pianist Andre-Michel Schub’s elegant solo in Cesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations. Schub coupled his usual aristocratic keyboard articulation with a strong sense of textural definition and contrast, virtues that made this chestnut sound viable again. If he stormed on cue, he never allowed those Lisztian pyrotechnics to get in the way of his carefully thought-out structural architecture.

Leading the orchestra was guest conductor Hugh Wolff, music director of the New Jersey Symphony. In both the Franck and the Strauss, he respected the soloist’s primary interpretive role, reining the orchestra perhaps too cautiously in the Franck. Wolff muted the interplay between Schub and the symphony in a composition where the two forces should be equal.

At the time of its completion, Strauss apparently had doubts about the musical merit of his “Burleske.” It is infrequently performed, although pops concert programmers ought to consider its merits for balmy alfresco listening. Schub took the tongue-in-cheek humor in stride, exaggerating his otherwise proper keyboard demeanor to let the audience know he was in on the composer’s joke. And he was more than equal to the work’s nasty technical demands.

Wolff clearly savored the “Romeo and Juliet” suite, conducting it from memory with balletic abandon. More than once it appeared he was about to complete a jete into the viola section. While the players did not evidence the refined ensemble heard in last week’s Mahler Symphony No. 4, they did establish in this extroverted exercise that they have progressed far beyond the rough and unfocused sonorities that prevailed earlier this season. From the evidence of their Prokofiev performance, however, a reliable precision in attacks and releases is a goal still to be achieved.

The opening Berlioz Overture to “Beatrice and Benedict” was unremarkable save for an unusually crisp response from the brass sections. They crowned the piece with a stentorian but ingratiating final flourish.