Music Review : Schifrin Conducts Debut Orchestra

After much shuffling of the lineup, Lalo Schifrin and the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra finally settled upon a program Sunday afternoon at Royce Hall. And it was a mostly stimulating one at that, capped by a strong, professional-sounding performance of Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” at the close--where it should have been placed all along.

Unencumbered by cloudy, churchy, distancing ideas, Schifrin went after the Stravinsky in brisk, at times violent, fashion, seemingly stressing the prickly, sardonic side of the composer’s personality. Furthermore, the members of the orchestra played it with urgency and skill, particularly in the third movement flurries where the brass responded with terrific and appropriate bite. The UCLA Chorus added a penetrating choral sound that thankfully became hushed enough to do the job in the score’s final ethereal pages.

The originally announced Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 vanished in favor of the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto, where, alas, pianist Alan Chow’s small-scale, soft-focused playing was compromised by handfuls of wrong notes. The backing, however, was solid enough, with some interesting phrasing ideas in the first movement.

Earlier, Schifrin the composer gave a chamber-sized YMF delegation a shot at one of his finer concert works, a witty, neoclassical five-movement suite called “Tropicos” (1981). It was a good pick, given the suite’s strong stylistic link with Stravinsky--and the young string players seemed to relish Schifrin’s unorthodox tapping and strumming effects in the final movement.