MUSIC REVIEW : South Coast Features Works of U.S. Composers

In the first half of this century, American composers were plagued by those who would ask them to find a voice distinct from European styles. On Saturday, in Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College, the South Coast Symphony presented a program featuring works by native composers who had paved the way for acceptance of the next generations.

Music director John Larry Granger opened the program with Charles Ives at his most conservative--his Third Symphony, “The Camp Meeting.” By the time the orchestra had completed its ponderous labor over this challenging work and had waded through David Amram’s hodgepodge entitled “Ode to Lord Buckley,” about a quarter of the audience had decided to slip out.

Under Granger’s baton, the symphony had its moments, particularly the playful exchange among ensembles in “Children’s Day,” punctiliously punctuated by precise dotted rhythms. But in the unflattering acoustical atmosphere of this hall, the work emerged as if decisions regarding balance and color had been left for more welcoming locales.

The faint of heart needn’t have worried about works by Aaron Copland and Ives on the second half of the agenda.

Copland was represented by his accessible “Tender Land” Suite. The orchestra offered a simple reading, aided by much improved sectional phrasing and an effort to exploit the expansiveness of the score through dynamics. However, subtleties of shaping and intonation remained elusive.

Dressed in William Schuman’s whimsical orchestration, Ives’ Variations on “America” closed the evening.

Here, Granger chose a rollicking tempo and, with balance problems minimized by the composer’s deft scoring, the work made its appropriately good-natured effect. Trumpeters Alfred Lang and Karen Tkaczyk frolicked admirably during their solos.

First performed in 1981, Amram’s concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra, entitled “Ode to Lord Buckley,” smacks of the club ambience that once surrounded its “beat” poet inspiration. A comfortably familiar jazz idiom permeates the three movements, interrupted by more serious pretensions as well as sillier mixtures resembling Mideastern chant with klezmer instrumentation.

Soloist James Rotter sailed through the concerto with fine intonation and bright, open sound, pausing to vary dynamics only for the Ballad of the second movement.