MUSIC REVIEW : Pops Conductor Keeps Politics Off the Podium

Patrons of the San Diego Pops who hoped guest conductor Harry Ellis Dickson might crack a few political jokes or offer some pre-election predictions were disappointed at Wednesday night’s Hospitality Point concert. Michael Dukakis’ father-in-law could not have been more benignly apolitical, even though a small claque at some tables near the conductor’s podium set up a pro-Dukakis chant as Dickson was announcing the final pieces on his program.

No doubt any conductor who flourished in the shadow of the late Arthur Fiedler, Mr. Boston Pops himself,

learned the art of diplomacy at an early stage. After a long career with the Boston Pops, Dickson now wears his title of associate conductor laureate with an uncanny combination of aristocratic ease and Yankee common sense. His podium manner is genial without any of the cheap humor and antics that are the stock and trade of most of Dickson’s colleagues.

There was, however, nothing benign about the musical results from the suave Bostonian’s sturdy but unflashy conducting. In spite of some abrasive over-amplification at high-frequency levels, the local orchestra sported a pleasantly cohesive sound. And, in some of the real music on the program, Bizet’s “Carmen” Suite No. 1 and a short suite from Handel’s “Water Music,” their music-making was quite persuasive.

Damion Bursill-Hall’s flute solo from the “Carmen” third-act interlude magically wedded Bizet’s haunting nocturnal evocation with the darkness that had just enveloped the Mission Bay concert site.

In deference to the Fiedler tradition, Dickson served up some of the hoary Boston Pops favorites: Jacob Gade’s “Jalousie,” Leroy Anderson’s “Fiddle Faddle,” and the “St. Louis Blues March,” along with a George M. Cohan medley, waltzes from several Richard Rodgers’ musicals and a pair of classic swing numbers. The vintage program could have been given in 1958, the year Dickson had his first crack at the Boston Pops podium, when the violinist was invited to step in for an ailing Fiedler.

To his credit, Dickson appeared neither jaded nor stale conducting this repertory, guiding these standards through their paces with unflagging enthusiasm, not to mention ample praise for the local orchestra and soloists from within the ranks. The program will be repeated tonight and Saturday at Hospitality Point.

Should Dukakis move into the White House, Dickson would make a classy honorary vizier of music. It would be the first musical milestone since former Vice President Spiro Agnew redesigned the attire of the President’s military trumpeters.