MUSIC REVIEW : 1990 Institute Orchestra at UCLA

Three weekend programs by the orchestra of the 1990 Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute are attracting festive, if not yet capacity, audiences to Royce Hall at UCLA. At the second of these, Sunday night, there was again much to be happy about.

A pot-luck of programs and conductors is the rule at Institute Orchestra performances. This time around, the draw was fortunate: conducting fellow Lan Shui led the two-year old Concerto for Orchestra by Steven Stucky; Thomas Stevens appeared as soloist in the Haydn Concerto, conducted by associate conducting fellow William Eddins; and visiting faculty member Stanislaw Skrowaczewski presided over the suite from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

Despite occasional roughness and infrequent imbalances, the latest Institute Orchestra played up to the extremely high professional standard set in the previous eight summers.

Introduced by the Philadelphia Orchestra in October 1988, and on the West Coast in April 1989, Stucky’s engaging and haunting Concerto makes strong demands, which both the players and conductor Shui met with apparent ease.

Stevens, for 18 years principal trumpet of the Philharmonic, brought pristine musical and technical values, felicitous style and genuine enthusiasm to the Haydn work, wherein he was handsomely seconded by Eddins and a medium-size ensemble.

Inspired by Skrowaczewski--as Hollywood Bowl audiences found themselves last week--the 100 players of the Institute Orchestra accomplished feats of soloism and ensemble we might not have expected in the “Romeo” suite. If not every single measure emerged immaculately stated or mechanically perfect, the stunning overall performance nonetheless grabbed the listener irresistibly.