POPS REVIEWS : Orchestra Gives Alert, Energetic Porter Tribute

Veteran pops conductor Skitch Henderson took the helm of the San Diego Symphony’s SummerPops on Wednesday night at Hospitality Point. He reminisced about his musical contacts with Cole Porter and Charlie Chaplin, touted his favorite neglected composers (Victor Herbert in particular), put down television and Muzak, and admitted that he would rather have been at home in Connecticut.

“I’ve been on the road 150 years,” he sighed to the audience, which, in spite of the implied slight, was charmed by his manner and his evident affection for the music he had programmed. In addition to the Porter tributes--including suites from “Kiss Me Kate” (1948) and “Can Can” (1954)--Henderson selected many of his own arrangements of music from the era of the radio and motion picture studio orchestra.

While this oeuvre is neither thought-provoking nor particularly exciting, it uses the orchestra in a sophisticated manner. Henderson’s effulgent arrangement of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” probably would have made the composer blush, although it is an instrumental tour de force. Eric Knight’s “A Tribute to Charlie Chaplin” deftly distributed the solos around the orchestra and indulged in a generous catalogue of lush instrumental combinations.

The orchestra’s response to Henderson was alert and energetic, although the violins never seemed to give him that lush studio orchestra wash of sound he frequently requested. If Henderson’s conducting style appeared ungainly and naive, he was nevertheless on top of his scores. He also played a few riffs on the piano with the orchestra, and he threw in a sympathetic solo rendition of Porter’s “Blue Boy Blues” for good measure. Andre Watts does not have to begin practicing overtime because of Henderson’s keyboard prowess.

Part of the irony of this neatly packaged Porter tribute was the absence of a vocalist to sing those incomparable Porter lyrics. The eager listener was taunted trying to remember all the wonderful words to the likes of “So In Love,” “It’s All Right With Me” and “Anything Goes.”

Wednesday’s crowd was a respectable 2,789. The evening was made more enjoyable by an unexpected temporary closing of Lindbergh Field during most of the concert; it made the sky overhead friendlier, and much quieter. This Cole Porter program repeats tonight and Saturday at Hospitality Point.