Music : Falletta Conducts L.B. Symphony

Musical programming is not an exact science, yet when it’s not done properly, one knows it. Though all of the works on the Long Beach Symphony’s program Saturday night were Viennese, they mixed together no better than oil and water.

JoAnn Falletta led the orchestra before the now-characteristically sold-out audience in the Terrace Theater. She began with Mozart’s Overture to “Don Giovanni” in a spirited, poised but undramatic reading.

She followed with Schoenberg’s prolonged essay in pained chromaticism, “Verklarte Nacht,” a large stylistic leap for at least one listener. Still, it might have worked had the performance been more persuasive.

Falletta sought to restrain some of this music’s inherent emotional bulges with firmly controlled lyricism and clear textures. The music seethed. Yet it led nowhere; there was no big emotional payoff, no letting go. The strings in general performed solidly, but struggled enough with the high-range expressivity and high-calorie chromatics to detract from their effect.

After intermission came another stylistic turn-around, Mahler’s “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen,” with Canadian mezzo-soprano Janice Taylor as soloist. She sang with richly focused tone and supple melodiousness. She brought a resigned calm to the intimate emotions of the music, plenty of weight to its outbursts. Unfortunately, some of her subtler shading got lost in the cavernous Terrace acoustic. Falletta offered a vibrant accompaniment.

Then, as if disunity were the order of the day, Falletta concluded with the puffery of Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier” Suite. This music, a potpourri of tunes rather than a dramatic entity, proved an ineffective closer to the program. Conductor and orchestra gave it a colorful and efficient reading, but its voluptuousness proved resistible.