MUSIC REVIEW : Orchestra Restores Symphony’s Luster

Gypsy dances in musical form opened the San Diego Symphony’s concert Friday night at Symphony Hall. Guest conductor Zdenek Macal, Czechoslovakian born and currently music director of the Milwaukee Symphony, led the orchestra through Zoltan Kodaly’s “Dances of Galanta,” which the Hungarian composer wrote in 1933 based on his memories of a Gypsy string band he heard as a child.

Kodaly is credited with reviving Gypsy music, which by the late 1800s had become mannered salon music, having been “rhapsodized” by Franz Lizst and Johannes Brahms, among others. With his colleague Bela Bartok, Kodaly collected it and other Hungarian folk music. Both composers put these folk idioms in their music, but Kodaly’s is the more tuneful and less complicated. And the less intriguing.

Giving simple melodies massive orchestral treatment can distance the original’s emotional impact. Raw immediacy is lost. Muzak has shown us that. In “Dances,” the jaunty and playful mischief implied in Gypsy rhythms was rendered innocuous. Fieriness became mere dull speed.

Nevertheless, the orchestra engaged the score’s parlays with clarity, particularly clarinetist Sheryl Renk and the rest of the wind section.

Muzak has also demonstrated the artistic nightmare of taking “pretty” melodic themes out of context. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony--a veritable clipbook of melodies--has fallen prey to various appropriations over the years. One of the most famous is Andre Kostelanetz’s song “Moon Love.”

Hearing this Romantic masterpiece performed live at Symphony Hall was akin to the delightful shock of seeing a finished art or architecture restoration. One could appreciate the shining glory of the original without murky layers of distortion.

In the lyrical romanza of the second movement, for example, the horn’s famous dolce solo notes (the one’s Kostelanetz couldn’t resist) were articulated, as written, and not mushed through a schmaltz filter. One assumes John Lorge, principal horn for the symphony, delivered the tender solo, but from this reviewer’s seat, the brass section was not visible.

It was certainly audible, however, and sometimes radiant. But it was distractingly loud in too many passages to overlook, especially in the last movement.

Macal preferred his dynamics to weigh heavily on the forte side. Very few bars hushed topiannissimo. His direction of this work, by memory, was exacting, sometimes spry. He even did a few waltz steps on the podium in sync with the beginning of the third movement. He brought out the work’s brooding bass underpinnings, which resonated clearly. And the violins and violas were so uniform at times as to achieve a buttery wholeness.

Both orchestra and conductor appeared thoroughly comfortable with this work. Their assurance, and the music, held the audience spellbound at times and engendered a hearty ovation at the close.

An earlier work in the program, by contrast, did not possess the same ease. A double concerto for cellos by 44-year-old American composer David Ott was performed by soloist John Walz, who is principal cellist with the Long Beach and Glendale orchestras, and by San Diego Symphony’s principal cellist Xin-Hua Ma.

The work, structured in a 3-movement sonata form, is an old-fashioned valentine to the cello. Only mildly dissonant, and timid on extended techniques, the work was far from experimental, although written in 1987. It was somber in a pleasant way--the way Tchaikovsky’s melancholic strains can seem rapturous--and therefore fit the program well.

The cellos parts are intimately joined musically in this work, and on stage the soloists were side to side--certainly present to one another. Yet though they played expertly, Walz and Ma seemed disconnected in spirit.