MUSIC REVIEW : Three Lead Institute Orchestra

The activities of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute Orchestra, now in its eighth summer season, and its other concert-giving entities seem to have become a cottage industry.

The factory was operating Sunday night at the orchestra’s second Royce Hall concert of 1989. Three conductors occupied the podium, the violin soloist was a member of the faculty, the program gave everyone a chance to show off and a sizable audience nearly filled the auditorium’s large downstairs area.

Through annual changes of personnel, the institute’s symphonic body remains a brilliant collection of young, proto-professional string and wind players working hard to become an ensemble. Its main characteristics are enthusiasm, a practically unbridled energy and the great promise of discipline.

In Copland’s Third Symphony, conducted efficaciously by associate director David Alan Miller, these elements were on display, at times bringing the work into focus, in other moments clouding its profile.

Raucousness, only partially the fault of the Royce acoustics, marred much of this reading, making bombast out of boldness, noise out of peroration. What hit the listener regularly in the aggressive second movement was overplaying and overstatement, and it gave Copland’s noble utterances the shallowness of Bruckner.

Institute conducting apprentice Szu-Tzu Chiu opened the program with another piece of orchestral brilliance, Verdi’s “Forza del Destino” Overture. The young UCLA student served notice of impressive leadership skills; the orchestra made a mighty, unmodulated and undeniably thrilling blast.

Controlled brilliance was the contribution of Alexander Treger--a concertmaster of the L.A. Philharmonic and one of six members of the institute advisory committee--who became soloist in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.

Treger produced a gorgeous tone, raced solidly but unhurriedly through the work’s virtuosic challenges, and brought freshness to his individual statements. This was a happy reminder of the charms still left in the old war horse. Conducting institute fellow Kate Tamarkin kept the orchestra on track neatly.