Dance and Music Reviews : Patrick Flynn Leads Riverside Orchestra

Approaching the end of his fourth season at the helm of the Riverside County Philharmonic, Patrick Flynn continues to upgrade an accomplished band of players while widening its musical horizons.

The English-born, former Ballet Theatre conductor again put his symphonic ensemble on display at its latest concert Saturday night in Municipal Auditorium in downtown Riverside. The splendid results proved revelatory.

Restoring Beethoven’s “Pastorale” Symphony to its original gloss is no easy task, but Flynn and Co. came close to doing as much, in a performance both pristine and detailed, solidly self-propelled and attentively stylish.

All the work’s many contrasts emerged in place, solo lines asserted themselves with panache, yet a genuine sense of collegiality informed the entirety.

Most cherishably, Flynn’s clarifying of Beethoven’s musical materials extended to the point where inner voices both sang and spoke, and also gave each other the chance to be heard. Some of the orchestra’s choirs remain inconsistent, yet the whole body seems to have come a long way in a short time.

Ever-animated but not self-aggrandizing, Flynn gave the concert’s solo spot to the ever-wondrous Allan Vogel, an oboist who has few peers and no betters.

Aided attentively by conductor and orchestra, the celebrated principal of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra created, in the Oboe Concerto by Richard Strauss, an entire world of musical sensibility, a world informed by the most elegant phrasing, effortless virtuosity and pertinent emotional focus.

One of the more plummy fruits of the composer’s old age--it was written in 1946, on the suggestion of the young American virtuoso John De Lancie--the concerto makes tremendous demands on the artistic resources of its soloist. Vogel not only met the challenges, he actually reveled in them.

Due to the exigencies of rehearsal, Flynn late last week deleted the promised Symphony No. 82 by Haydn--which he now promises for a future season--in favor of the shorter Overture to “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

In the event, the Riverside forces gave a most convincing, neat and invigorating performance of one of Mozart’s most exposing pieces.