MUSIC REVIEW : Falletta Coaxes the Right Note From S.D. Chamber Orchestra

JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Long Beach Symphony, made an auspicious local debut Monday night as guest conductor of the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. In addition to her poise on the podium and polished baton technique, Falletta was aided by oboe virtuoso Allan Vogel’s wonted elegance in two oboe concertos. And the unusually eager cadre of orchestra musicians meant it was not business as usual at Sherwood Auditorium.

Falletta and company made their best case on the program’s first half, devoted to a pair of harmonically untroubled 20th-Century works, Dominick Argento’s “Homage to the Queen of Tonga” and Ralph Vaughan William’s A Minor Oboe Concerto.

The chamber orchestra has played the clever, pictorial Argento suite before, but not with the tight ensemble Falletta demanded, nor with as much ebullient good humor. Principal oboe Peggy Michel negotiated her many prickly solos with stylish bravura; this was a banner evening for double reeds.

Vogel approached the long-winded lyricism of Vaughan Williams’ concerto as an extended soliloquy, which he infused with both ardor and eloquence. Falletta thoughtfully shaped the composer’s nervous invention--the concerto is not one of his meandering bucolic reveries--coaxing a halo of warm string tone to surround the soloist.

Although Falletta displayed evident authority and finesse, her baton was not a magic wand. She could not make this group, with its limited rehearsal schedule, into a supple Mozart orchestra overnight.

In Mozart’s effervescent Symphony No. 29 in A Major, she had to settle for robust enthusiasm cloaked in a strident tone from the violins in their more extroverted moments. Although it takes a greater measure of discipline to give Mozart’s sunny opus an unforced brilliance, Falletta paced its many contrasts with the symphony’s overall shape clearly in mind. Her sense of Mozartean drama and architecture could not be faulted.

In Alessandro Marcello’s D Minor Oboe Concerto, Vogel’s fleet technique gave the rarely heard Baroque gem its due, even if the orchestra’s ragged octaves provided occasional distractions. The performance overall left but one lingering question. How soon will Falletta return to a San Diego podium?