MUSIC REVIEW : Georgian Conductor Wins Kudos Again

Although some locals are still debating the merits of last fall’s Soviet Arts Festival, introducing Soviet Georgian conductor Jansoug Kakhidze to the city was one achievement beyond cavil. The white-haired maestro won kudos for conducting the festival-opening opera “Boris Godunov,” and he continued his impressive show in a last-minute substitution for an indisposed Soviet colleague on one of the San Diego Symphony’s festival programs.

Kakhidze returned to Symphony Hall Friday night for yet another welcome collaboration with the local orchestra. Like those athletic, sword-wielding Georgian dancers, Kakhidze cut a formidable figure on the podium. Fortunately, his dramatic thrusts and parries always served the music with telling insight.

Friday’s program commenced shakily, however, with a performance of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite that never quite jelled. Although Kakhidze prescribed incisive attacks and taut phrasing, the players delivered inconsistently. A felicitous passage or deft solo was immediately overshadowed by a rough entrance or fuzzy texture. Too bad, because the conductor’s concept of the suite was refreshingly acerbic; he was not about to allow “Pulcinella” to be mistaken for some prettified pastiche by Respighi.

Following “Pulcinella,” the orchestra’s principal trombone Heather Buchman was featured in Henri Tomasi’s Trombone Concerto. If anyone can persuade skeptical concert audiences that the trombone is a worthy solo instrument and can sing as sweetly as a violin, Buchman has the technique to do it. Tomasi’s three-movement Concerto gave her ample opportunity to flaunt her dulcet tones and display her prowess while navigating its craggy passages. She resisted the temptation to make the Concerto a mere showpiece, however, and coaxed from this odd composition more wit and emotion than one might imagine possible. Composed for the Paris Conservatory 1956 competitions, the concerto reflected Tomasi’s stylistic eclecticism. Gauzy, impressionistic textures were spliced with jazzy simulations, but structural considerations were definitely secondary. At times it sounded more like a sound track in search of a movie.

Kakhidze crowned his program with Rachmaninoff’s infrequently played Third Symphony in A Minor, a magnificent vehicle for indulging in the grand gestures of ripe Russian Romanticism. To his credit, Kakhidze made the orchestra sound fuller than its modest size, but more importantly elicited a mature, probing account of Rachmaninoff’s autumnal work. From the strings came a buoyant, warm tone they rarely divulge, and the delicious slow movements pulsed with alternately brooding and expansively arched themes.