San Diego Spotlight : Whitcombe Sax Solo Livens Chamber Orchestra Release

The San Diego Chamber Orchestra’s second recording for Koch International Classics is due in the local record shops next week. Without the smashing performance of saxophonist Michael Whitcombe in Jacques Ibert’s Concertino da Camera, however, this sampler of 20th-Century French music would not rate a niche on a collector’s already full compact disc shelf.

When Whitcombe played the Ibert in April with the local chamber orchestra, his brilliant, stylish performance wowed the Sherwood Auditorium audience. On the Koch International compact disc, every bit of Whitcombe’s excitement, creamy legato line and delectable sonority comes through. He sounds as if he is enraptured by the music, an increasingly rare musical state in today’s note-perfect, take-no-chances recording ethos.

Music director Donald Barra and his orchestra, however, perform at a level significantly removed from rapture. In the Ibert Divertissement and Francis Poulenc’s Sinfonietta, the approach is cautious and prosaic. Oddly, a pithy quotation by Poulenc in the notes to the disc’s deluxe program book describes French musical style as “leavened with that lightness of spirit without which life would be unendurable.” That lightness of spirit is exactly what Barra’s Poulenc and Ibert lack.

One of the recording’s problems is its overly dry, clinical sound, an ambience that severely diminishes the orchestra’s string sound and makes it sound smaller than its complement of 35 players. In the Divertissement, for example, the snare drum’s brittle, assertive presence makes the piece sound like a snare drum concerto.

This recording was made in the state-of-the-art Warren recording studios at UC San Diego. Tamara Saylor, the orchestra’s general manager, said the group’s next recording project, dedicated to music by English composer Malcolm Arnold, will be recorded in the low-tech but highly flattering acoustics of the Founders’ Chapel on the University of San Diego campus. The chamber orchestra’s first compact disc was recorded there to far more satisfying sonic results.

Americana. For a change, local music organizations are giving American music week, traditionally observed during the first full week of November, its due.

In a burst of national spirit, the University of San Diego’s music department will present three different programs of Americana Nov. 6-8 at USD’s Camino Theatre. Downtown, the San Diego Symphony will offer Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony under guest conductor Lukas Foss Nov. 8-10, at Copley Symphony Hall.

For fans of music trivia, it should be noted that American music week was started by the American Music Center, a New York foundation that maintains a 40,000-volume repository of American scores and recordings. In 1985, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts, the music center received an NEA grant to publicize the November week in which performing organizations were encouraged to program music by American composers.

According to a spokesman from the American Music Center, the foundation promoted American music week through 1989. By that time, the idea had caught on, although some foundation members worried that focusing on a single week of the year diminished their overall advocacy of American music.

The three USD programs begin on Wednesday at 8 p.m., when the USD Orchestra under Henry Kolar and the Community Choir under Robert Campbell will present a potpourri of Ives, Billings, Copland, Hovhaness and Bernstein.

At 8 p.m. Thursday, Lily Gunn will conduct a newly formed group, the San Diego Artists, in Copland’s original setting of “Appalachian Spring” for 13 players. This program will also feature Foss’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” sung by soprano Carol Plantamura, and Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” sung by soprano Ann Chase. Composer David Ward-Steinman will accompany violist Karen Elaine in his “Cinnabar,” a recent work he wrote for the performer. Chase and Ward-Steinman are both on the San Diego State University faculty, and Carol Plantamura is chair of the UC San Diego music department. Kudos to Gunn for gathering this ecumenical group of performers under one roof.

The USD series will culminate at 7 p.m. Friday with a tribute to Duke Ellington and Cole Porter performed by the Jack Wheaton jazz trio, featuring vocalist Ellen Johnson.