MUSIC REVIEW : Foss Brings Zeal to Copland Opus

Although he was regarded as the country’s premier composer for 50 years, Aaron Copland’s reputation rested on a tiny handful of works. A fanfare, a cute tone poem, and a few ballet scores established his musical identity, and America’s musical institutions have rarely looked beyond this comfortable canon.

Fortunately, there is more to Copland than his ubiquitous “Appalachian Spring.” Under guest conductor Lukas Foss, the San Diego Symphony offered a rousing, athletic reading of Copland’s Third Symphony Friday night at Copley Symphony Hall. A composer and life-long advocate of contemporary music, the 69-year-old Foss brought a certain missionary zeal to his assignment.

Arguably Copland’s most ambitious orchestral piece, the Third Symphony aspires to the weight and structural complexity that came so naturally to his Russian counterparts Prokofiev and Shostakovich. If Copland did not match their sophisticated symphonic argument and inescapable cumulative effect, he nevertheless crafted in this symphony an expansive essay of deftly contrasted components that exuded an unquestionable optimism.

Foss’s gregarious, arm-jabbing conducting method--he did not use a baton--elicited a high-energy response from the players. This proved successful in the scherzo and final movement, the one built around Copland’s earlier “Fanfare for the Common Man,” but was less effective in the slow third movement, which seemed to wander and overstay its welcome. The players, notably the woodwind soloists, captured Copland’s plaintive, slightly naive melodic idiom. But the violins were taxed by the gossamer, high-pitched opening strains of the andantino, and the horns marred the signature finale fanfare with their unwelcome covey of false notes.

On the opening half of the program, violinist Elmar Oliveira’s performance of Max Bruch’s G Minor Violin Concerto was as commanding and sonically voluptuous as one is likely to hear. Oliveira projected the concerto’s long, melismatic lines with consummate authority, and his immaculately focused tone uncannily fused warmth and brilliance. Foss and the orchestra provided a spirited, plush accompaniment, clearly inspired by the soloist’s bravura.

Two shorter works garnished the concert. Foss took Mozart’s Overture to “Don Giovanni” at an unhurried tempo, projecting a sense of mystery rather than the typical demonic foreboding. A second excerpt from the opera was listed in the program, but was omitted without explanation.

Foss’s own Fanfare for Orchestra preceded the Copland symphony. The modest work contrasted astringent trumpet calls with short, percussive blasts from full orchestra. Perhaps Foss’s prickly fanfare was meant to add an ironic footnote to the more exuberant fanfares Copland wove in his Third Symphony.