Music Reviews : Miller Conducts Institute Orchestra at Royce Hall

A youngish audience, polite but predictably fidgety, greeted David Alan Miller’s conducting of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony in Royce Hall on Sunday night. The climax of a second UCLA concert this summer by the orchestra of the L.A. Philharmonic Institute, this “Eroica” exerted its strengths in a deeply accomplished performance.

It is in the nature of training orchestras, of course, even high-powered, graduate-level training orchestras like this one, to produce readings in process, not finished performances. Nevertheless, Miller--associate director of the 1988 institute--seemed to have put together a well-considered, sensibly paced, style-conscious “Eroica.”

The opening movement had breadth without loginess; the Funeral March reached its peak in a series of ascending emotional plateaus; playful sobriety characterized the scherzo. Only the complex finale gave evidence of moving a hair faster than clear articulation will allow--yet, except for passing muddinesses, no harm was done. And the 90-plus instrumentalists of the ensemble played splendidly.

Eventually, the “Eroica” will or will not be one of Miller’s specialties; in the meantime, he seems to have mastered its intricacies.

Kirk Muspratt and Anne Harrigan, two of three conducting fellows of the 1988 institute, led the orchestra in the first half.

As far as it went, Harrigan’s incisive conducting of Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” Suite produced many of the charms and attributes of that popular piece. But it was an unfinished performance, despite Harrigan’s sensible pacing and projected sense of line. Muddy textures clouded issues of balance; inconsistent intonation added elements of surprise and unevenness.

Until a nicely delineated final Allegro, the performance that Muspratt led of Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell” Overture seemed long on loudness and short on finesse. When it all came together, at the end, it was worth the wait.