Music Reviews : Cal State Northridge Symphony Opens Festival

Ah, the vagaries of youth, student orchestra department: One moment a collective sound that verges on the professional, the next a sectional breakdown that painfully reveals a lack of experience.

Such was the impression made by the Cal State Northridge Symphony on Monday night.

Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Suite (1919 version) emerged a musical roller coaster, albeit with more ups than downs. Case in point, the “Dance of the Princess”: the reliable woodwinds (strongest section of the ensemble) found its fine efforts mitigated by weak intonation from the strings. Still, the orchestra subsequently produced some lush sounds.

Conductor David Aks brought sensitive pacing to the ensuing Infernal Dance without sacrificing momentum. But, again, the group’s best efforts were almost randomly sabotaged by unreliable brass playing.

The overly bright acoustics of the Student Union auditorium did nothing to help the situation. Certainly the lone cricket that stayed to the end of the concert benefited from the reverberant hall.

Joseph Schwantner’s “New Morning for the World” (1982), with a narrator’s text taken from Martin Luther King Jr., proved problematic as well, but in the end made far greater effect.

Formally indebted to Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” and motivically and texturally reminiscent of Britten, the work suffers from the episodic nature of the speaker’s entrances in music that always seems to be transitional.

An expanded percussion section provided yeoman’s service in the fierce opening and climactic sections. Strings and brass achieved better intonation and several shining moments, the tangible results of the students’ commitment to the work.

Narrator Danny Glover contended with an oversensitive amplification system that badly distorted his loud passages. Given his professional stage background and the acoustical liveliness of the room, one wished that he could have performed without microphone.