Music Reviews : Classics Concert Closes Long Beach Symphony Season

Space was at a premium at the final Long Beach Symphony “Classics” concert of the season at the Long Beach Convention Center Saturday. An on-time visitor to the preconcert lecture by guest conductor JoAnn Falletta in Center Theater found no place to sit--so stood. And, according to Mary Newkirk, general manager of the orchestra, the subsequent concert in Terrace Theater came close (“96%-plus”) to filling that 3,000-seat hall.

Falletta, the 34-year-old New Yorker who currently holds conducting posts with second-level orchestras in Queens, N.Y., Denver and San Francisco, justified the interest. Apparently a young musician born to conduct, she sends all the right messages from the podium.

Clear of beat, aggressive in rhythm, careful of articulation and sensitive in regard to dynamics, she goes about her business without ostentation or self-consciousness. Most important, she seems to cause superior playing and clarified performances. She certainly got the best out of the Long Beach players in an exposing program devoted to Ibert’s “Escales,” Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C, K. 467, and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Bartok’s familiar symphonic mural vibrated with the resonances of thorough probing, yet it seemed to move urgently through its emotional kaleidoscope. Obviously, the orchestra had been coached deeply in its subtexts as well as its exterior challenges.

There was less instrumental transparency in Falletta’s otherwise successful traversal of Ibert’s pictorial musical canvas, but a similar sense of completeness in its outer elements.

Directness and self-regulating balances characterized Falletta’s leadership, and the reduced orchestra’s playing, in the Mozart concerto. Andre-Michel Schub, a competent pianist of no particular suavity or conviction, nevertheless played through the solo part deftly, if with little charm and with a wider--one might even say cruder--dynamic palette than necessary.