Star Performers, Student Players an Unlikely Mix at Troubled Batiquitos Music Festival

Over the last seven days, the Batiquitos Festival has experienced more plot twists and turns than a week of soap operas.

Questions and rumors have run rampant. Would the board announce bankruptcy? Would the students from the Batiquitos Institute be stranded in San Diego with no classes and no teachers? Would there be anyone left to run the festival if the board solved its fiscal problems?

When we last tuned in to “Bathos on Batiquitos,” the festival’s board of directors had decided to tough it out and continue to the bitter end in one guise or another.

On Saturday night at the outdoor Sammis Pavilion, most of the previously scheduled orchestra concert was performed under the baton of Leonid Grin, the distinguished Russian conductor who is slated to make his San Diego Syymphony debut next season. Guest pianist Gary Graffman did the honors at the Steinway in Ravel’s “Concerto for the Left Hand.”

Although the stars performed as advertised, just what sort of animal was that Batiquitos Festival Orchestra? Festival impresario Michael Tseitlin had promised earlier this spring that his festival’s orchestra in residence would be made up of distinguished faculty members in key positions augmented by carefully selected young professionals.

Saturday’s musicians, however, were primarily those students from the institute who had elected to remain in spite of the crises.

As a student ensemble, their playing was adequate, although one could hardly imagine the agents of maestros Grin and Graffman agreeing to sign their charges to perform under such questionable circumstances.

The orchestra went in and out of focus, especially in Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony, the last minute replacement for Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” For every velvet melody from the cello section there came a coarse bleat from the trumpets or an ill-tuned moan from the woodwinds. Although Grin infused the work with apt Slavic passion and shaped each movement with a knowing hand, the results were neither profound nor gripping.

Graffman’s execution of the Ravel alone was worth the admission price. A pianist with strength, stamina, and sparkle to spare, he nearly made up for the orchestra’s scrappy attacks and lack of rhythmic precision. His insightful grasp of the flashy concerto consistently left the players scrambling in his wake.

Grin opened the evening with Wagner’s brooding “Prelude and Love-Death “ from the opera “Tristan und Isolde,” a risky choice with such a modest string complement in an outdoor setting.

When it could be heard, the orchestra sounded shallow and tentative, with little of Wagner’s simmering passion coming to the surface. At least the Batiquitos amplification system stressed the orchestra’s acoustic sounds, unlike this season’s San Diego Pops, which has beefed up the amplified sound to levels usually reserved for heavy metal rock concerts.

Barring another radical revelation in the Batiquitos script, the festival orchestra will perform again this weekend, with an All-Viennese concert on July 15 and a Mozart night on July 16.