MUSIC REVIEW : Barnett Leads Santa Monica Symphony

Of the four men who have been engaged to conduct the Santa Monica Symphony this season--ergo, the four contenders for the post of music director--John Barnett, who led the orchestra Sunday evening at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, has the longest resume, having conducted in too many cities to list here.

At 72, Barnett is also the oldest. That may or may not affect his chances to succeed Yehuda Gilad as the orchestra’s sixth conductor; although Gilad was the youngest of five candidates in 1981-82, Victor Bay, Gilad’s predecessor, began his 16-year tenure at the age of 69.

As his calling card, Barnett chose an all-orchestral program of music by Beethoven, Elgar and Strauss. Following a serviceable reading of the “Leonore” Overture No. 1, he presided over a generally respectable, utterly conventional account of Beethoven’s First Symphony. Barnett’s Beethoven proved pleasant enough, but not especially exciting. He infused too little brio into the score, de-emphasizing, for instance, the syncopated accents in the Scherzo, and doing little to instill the music with a sense of momentum.

Though the strings found themselves scrambling more than a few times, the winds remained in good form, even if the woodwind solos were difficult to hear in the barn-like hall.

Balance problems proved even more bothersome in the Suite from Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier,” where individual lines, during the tutti sections, dissolved into a kind of murky fog of sound. Surely, Civic Auditorium was not entirely to blame.

Still, one found much to admire in this “Rosenkavalier” Suite: Barnett generated exciting contrasts and paced the 20-minute work intelligently; moreover, the solos were executed brilliantly.

Before the suite, Barnett conducted the orchestra’s strings in an imperfect but elegantly phrased reading of Elgar’s Serenade in E minor.