SAN DIEGO COUNTY : POPS REVIEW : Symphony Gives Brisk, Predictable Gershwin Show

When the San Diego Symphony plans a summer pops season, it embraces an all-Gershwin program as predictably as President Bush wraps himself in the American flag. Neither act is controversial, and both exude a fail-safe, patriotic aura.

Guest conductor Carl Hermanns and the orchestra served up this season’s annual Gershwin tribute Wednesday night at Hospitality Point. To his credit, Hermanns kept the pace brisk and the commentary free of cloying anecdotes. The symphony responded with alert, clean-cut enthusiasm, even when some of the works were thin on musical substance.

San Diego pianist Cecil Lytle brought his mighty technique and impeccable taste to a pair of Gershwin pieces for piano and orchestra, the final movement of the F Major Concerto and the “I Got Rhythm” Variations. Lytle’s persuasive, elegant concept of the concerto’s finale--his percussive attacks and subtly jazzy, rhythmic vivacity--only proved that he should have been allowed to play the entire concerto. A performer such as Lytle can charm a pops audience as well as a “serious” audience.

Lytle made an impressive case for the “I Got Rhythm” Variations, even though the orchestra part is at best perfunctory and occasionally lapses into the water-treading accompaniment of a generic dance band. It should be noted that the operators of the Hospitality Point sound system finally have found an appropriate level of amplification for the piano, although this moderate level probably will continue to disappoint those pops fans weaned on hard rock concerts.

Most of the program offered few surprises, although medleys from “Strike Up the Band” and “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” sounded fresh and light-hearted. In the 1932 “Cuban Overture,” symphony percussionist Jonathan Szanto delivered stylish xylophone solos, but not even the orchestra’s spirited playing could rescue the piece from its superficial glance at a neighboring musical culture. “Cuban Overture” always pales before the memory of “El salon Mexico,” another musical postcard by Gershwin’s fellow Brooklyn native, Aaron Copland.

Programming Gershwin’s suite, “Catfish Row,” from his opera “Porgy and Bess,” proved to be a welcome novelty. Compared to the more frequently played arrangement, “A Symphonic Picture of Porgy and Bess” by Robert Russell Bennett, Gershwin’s own suite kept some of the opera’s dramatic tension and unaffected appeal that Bennett managed to smooth over.

Hermanns’ conducting skill is steadily improving since he first appeared on a symphony pops program last year. When he becomes animated on the podium, he slips into interpretive dance steps right out of heavy-metal stage choreography, but most of his direction was clear and properly motivated.

An audience of 3,129 attended Wednesday’s concert. The program repeats tonight and Saturday at the Mission Bay pops site.