Music Reviews : Johnson Leads Broughton Premiere by Valley Symphony

Our rare visits to community orchestras are sometimes illuminating, sometimes downbeat. A drop-in at the venerable (in terms of age; it was founded in 1946) San Fernando Valley Symphony Saturday night proved invigorating.

Lois Johnson, a young conductor trained in the podium arts at the Manhattan School and at Aspen, has led the Valley orchestra since 1985. Four years later, what had been sagging community interest and diminishing audiences seem to have been revitalized--not least in the handsome and accomplished playing of the instrumental ensemble itself.

The problems, many of them extramusical, remain. The San Fernando Valley still has no medium-size (forget full-size) auditorium in which to show off a real symphonic band; the present hall, at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, seems to swallow more sound than it delivers--moreover, its lighting resources are at once glaring and limited.

And the enthusiastic but not overflowing audience which attended this Brahms/Broughton program needs additional recruits: an orchestra named for the Valley ought to be serving larger numbers of Valley listeners.

Still, there seems to be much hope in the present status of this ensemble. In Johnson’s carefully shaped but solid and apprehendable account of Brahms’ Second Symphony, genuine achievement could be observed: warm, cohesive and well-matched string tone; firm choral balances between instrumental groups; strong solo voices; overall integration.

And this performance reached its listeners. Each movement succeeded its predecessor in thought and profile; the longer musical line, as well as the Brahmsian rhetoric, communicated directly. Johnson is a conductor to watch.

She also served well the cause of a 20th-Century melodist, film composer Bruce Broughton, whose “Three Incongruities” for violin and orchestra received its world premiere on this occasion.

Endre Granat was the virtuosic and imperturbable soloist in the new concerto--Broughton actually uses that subtitle--a showpiece of violinistic effects in three purposeful, eclectic styles. In the opening, the composer pays homage to Bach and Vivaldi; in the lush heart of the work, his self-acknowledged model is Prokofiev; at the end, he surveys a number of other, and familiar, finales.

Like Broughton’s tuneful and well-crafted film scores, this one works. Johnson delivered the premiere with affection and energy. Surrounding it, the orchestra, led by Broughton, gave loose and sloppy readings of his “Young Sherlock Holmes” Suite and “Themes to ‘Silverado.’ ”