Music Reviews : JoAnn Falletta Opens Long Beach Symphony Season

Only a few years ago, the Long Beach Symphony canceled an entire season under the pressures caused by deficit spending. Survival was a real issue.

Saturday evening, new music director JoAnn Falletta opened the orchestra’s 55th season, and in many ways, the sold-out concert at Terrace Theater marked the beginning of a new era, more than just another new season.

The financial turn-around has already been accomplished. On the early evidence, the artistic health of the orchestra also seems to be robust.

Falletta’s reign did not begin on a peak, however. She opened the concert by turning to the audience and conducting a sluggish national anthem, a more than usually irrelevant ritual when there is no star-spangled banner in the house.

The transition to serious concert business was quick and complete in the following Overture to “The School for Scandal” by Barber. Here the playing was swift, spare and crackling with purposeful energy. Falletta kept the textures clear and nicely balanced, without any sense of fussiness.

Falletta is a very unobtrusive conductor. Not so much in podium presence--though she is a relatively restrained and direct batoneer--but in interpretive indulgence. She imparts a feeling of guiding a naturally emerging music, rather than forcibly creating it ex nihilo.

This was quite evident in the Sibelius First Symphony. As subtly directed by Falletta, it seemed one continuous, organic movement. Working from memory, she made no effort to chisel out her own points of emphasis, but let the symphony climb to one shattering climax.

The orchestra played for her appreciatively, though with some hesitation in attack. The sound remained taut and expressive at the softest levels, and crisply focused in the most extroverted passages. There was not a lot of weight to the sound, but it proved articulate and flexible.

Soloist for the evening was pianist Garrick Ohlsson, in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto. He brought a bright, sparkling sound to the task, compromised at times by blurry pedaling. He produced beautifully poised, sustained pianistic singing in the Adagio; elsewhere he settled largely for understatement or bucolic charm, though he did touch some of the mystery and heroism of the first movement.

Falletta and the orchestra contributed to the light impact of the finale, with an occasionally scattered, often inaudible accompaniment. In the all-redeeming Adagio, though, the collaboration was responsive, resourceful and rewarding.