Music Reviews : Fellows Orchestra at Strawberry Creek Festival

Because it is a training program as well as a performance series, the Strawberry Creek Music Festival emphasizes playing opportunities for its trainees, and it was 40 of these, called the Fellows Orchestra, which opened the 1989 Pepperdine University portion of the festival Sunday night.

Yehuda Gilad, founding conductor of Strawberry Creek, led the young people in a program of repertory standards. But, despite roughnesses in the playing, this was not an ordinary occasion. With admirable freshness, Gilad achieved vigorous, enthusiastic performances of this familiar music.

The complexities and inner workings of Brahms’ early Serenade in D sometimes exposed the incipient professionals unkindly, especially in a discombobulated and unpolished opening movement. Thereafter, they accomplished integration of forces more frequently. And Gilad’s caressive and pointed leadership gave all their efforts real cohesiveness.

The intimacy between players and listeners in Smothers Theatre at the Malibu campus proved a bonus in Gilad’s understated but affectionate reading of Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides” Overture. At first, one thought the young musicians were being timid--then, it became clear they were merely playing quietly, and with a transparency that proved tonic.

More inspiration came at mid-program, when two veteran soloists--and members of the festival faculty--joined the Fellows in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola.

Eudice Shapiro and Karen Ritscher, despite the disparity in their basic sounds--the violinist’s wiry and astringent, the violist’s lush and heavy--combined thought and execution and matched their phrasing and dynamics like longtime musical friends in a handsome, pertinent and stylish reading of the familiar work. Gilad and the reduced orchestra provided tight and lean accompaniment.

The festival continues at the Malibu campus through Aug. 12.