MUSIC REVIEW : San Diego Musical Tribute to Martin Luther King Sounds Right Notes

If Gospel music and symphonic repertory seem like strange bedfellows, the San Diego Symphony uncovered some amicable compatibilities in its Saturday afternoon commemorative concert for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Copley Symphony Hall. Assisted by 200 voices from the combined Southeast San Diego Community Choirs, the orchestra offered a musical tribute to King and to several strains of African-American music.

A pair of of foot-stomping contemporary Gospel arrangements by Terry Herald, “Resurrection Power” and “I Just Can’t Tell You,” successfully fused the energy of choir and orchestra into a powerful statement of faith. The ecstatic call and response choral patterns in “I Just Can’t Tell You,” as well as mezzo-soprano Rewanda Bernard’s spirited solos, elicited a deserved encore of the piece.

Leslie Dunner, associate conductor of the Detroit Symphony, performed the guest conductor’s duties with surprising sangfroid, since he had but a single rehearsal with chorus and orchestra together. San Diego choral director Louise Pearson trained the choir and also added her solid piano obbligatos to several of the anthems, including Peter J. Wilhousky’s traditional patriotic salvo, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A saccharine arrangement of an old revivalist hymn “The Old Rugged Cross” appeared to bore the choir, however. Soprano Lisa Paton’s soaring improvisations redeemed Robert Sadin’s overly conventional “For God So Loved the World”

Dunner devoted the first half of the concert to orchestral repertory ranging from a taut, triumphal reading of Verdi’s Overture to “La Forza del Destino” to a stylish medley of Duke Ellington favorites, “Ellington Fantasy.” In both works the brass sections proved their well-tuned sonic prowess and laudable stylistic versatility.

No doubt thematic considerations prompted Dunner to choose Adolphus Hailstork’s “Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed,” a solemn single-movement elegy to King. A contemporary African-American composer of note, Hailstork fashioned in “Epitaph” a muted chorale prelude on a theme that never really developed. The work showed a fine sense of orchestration, but its wandering, monochromatic motivic style offered an oddly inconclusive epitaph.

On the podium, Dunner displayed an athletic, precisely detailed technique typical of young conductors. His approach to Aaron Copland’s familiar “El Salon Mexico” was as good-humored and unforced as his interpretation of the Verdi Overture was earnest.