MUSIC REVIEW : Levi’s Fervent Baton Takes Orchestra on Energetic Ride

The meager audience that turned out for Thursday evening’s San Diego Symphony concert got more than an earful of conductor Yoel Levi, the Atlanta Symphony’s music director designate. The youthful, ebullient Levi also gave a vivid demonstration of aerobic conducting, bouncing on the podium to the buoyant rhythms of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Dvorak.

Although the local players responded enthusiastically to Levi’s radiant interpretations, they have responded with more precision and greater subtlety to other batons during this season of endless guest conductors.

In the opening “Symphony in Three Movements” by Stravinsky, Levi chose a gregarious, extroverted approach that contrasted sharply with the Stravinsky style of former San Diego Symphony music director David Atherton. The cerebral British maestro, a Stravinsky specialist, served up his composer of choice with Apollonian balance and emotional equanimity. Levi’s Stravinsky was genial and extroverted, user-friendly almost to a fault.

Dvorak’s optimistic Sixth Symphony hardly suffered from the conductor’s enthusiasm, with the exception of the slow second movement. It lacked a sense of serenity, a requisite repose following the vitality of the symphony’s opening movement. When it came to the Scherzo, written as a furiant , a traditional Czech dance, Levi’s fleet footwork left no doubt about the movement’s debt to the muse Terpsichore.

If Levi’s Dvorak can be taken as typical of his orchestral tonal ideal, it appears that the hope of Atlanta has his sights set on what has become the Chicago style under Solti--blaring brasses complemented by vibrant, lush strings. While the San Diego horns and brasses acquitted themselves with some distinction under Levi’s prodding, the local strings had neither the numbers nor the tonal largess of a Chicago Symphony to balance such blasts from the orchestra’s back row.

Pianist Stephen Drury made a stunning impression with his solo in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. Even if there was an undercurrent of anxious energy propelling his playing, his firm grasp of this self-conscious showpiece revealed an unmistakeable stamp of authority. Drury’s immaculate touch crafted discrete planes of sound, alternately elegant and aggressive, according to the composer’s shifting moods.

For all of Drury’s bravura, his phrases were shaped with incisive logic. Nor did the young American pianist miss the sardonic sentimentality of the middle movement’s motto theme. The orchestra was with him in spirit, although more rehearsal time no doubt would have sharpened the coordination between soloist and accompanying players.