MUSIC REVIEW : Flutist Shows Diversity in Classical, Jazz/Rock Performances : Symphony . . .

Monday night at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa, Peter Odegard conducted the Irvine Symphony in a varied program that included two substantial works with flute soloists.

The most curious piece on the program, Albert Franz Doppler’s Double Flute Concerto in D minor, highlighted the talents of flutists James Walker and Marianne Whitmyer.

This “reconstituted and adapted” version by flutist Andras Adorjan, albeit no masterpiece, produced a grand, Mendelssohn-like concerto with scattered duet lines, a double cadenza and an occasional Wagnerian melodic line.

Walker’s forceful, at-times-overpowering playing was mixed with Whitmyer’s more timid approach to create an uneven blend that marred passages where the flute parts move in parallel motion. Otherwise, Odegard’s steady conducting did much to maintain the music’s vitality and energy.

In Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto Pastoral,” for flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, horn and strings, Walker struggled with the quick, difficult passages that often found tongue and fingers out of sync. Other sections, especially the slower movements, were also problematic, as the orchestra’s reduced forces lacked a necessary finesse.

Also on the program was a new work, “Expansion/Explosion” by composer John Alan Gerhold, a former composition student of Odegard. Using a multistyled, history-in-a-nutshell form, Gerhold attempts to move from an elegant rococo style through a more chromatic Romanticism and into an anything-goes atonality, in about 10 minutes.

Innocuous themes and an overly thick orchestration water down this post-modern statement. The end result nods more to Andrew Lloyd Webber than to the desired eclecticism.

The evening began with a spirited reading of Rossini’s Overture to “La Gazza Ladra.”