Music Reviews : Russian Program at Redlands Bowl

The idyllic setting of Redlands Bowl made up for much Tuesday night, in the penultimate concert of the 69th summer season there. It made up for the mostly banal program, titled “From Russia With Love,” and it made up for the rough performances of the Inland Empire Symphony, conducted by Frank Fetta. It even almost made up for the primitive amplification system.

Set amid a turn-of-the-century residential area, the Redlands Bowl is quaint, peaceful, comfortable and popular. It attracts to its small but ambitious summer season between 80,000 and 100,000 people each year. It remained for Tuesday’s musical highlight, before a sizable crowd, to be provided by a first-time visitor to the environs, pianist Kai Zachary Wu.

The 22-year-old American-born pianist, of Chinese-Spanish descent, offered an engaging and individual performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. He didn’t seem much interested in the work’s grandiose rhetoric or lyrical outpourings, opting instead for a quick and crisp account--sometimes too quick and crisp.

One would have welcomed more swoon in his swoon and more sweep in his sweep. Nevertheless, this was hardly a by-the-numbers performance. He brought grace and elegance, if not big emotion, to lyrical passages and sharp focus and technical aplomb to the fistfuls-of-notes climaxes. A subdued personality seemed consistently involved with, and projected by, the music. Fetta and orchestra had some trouble keeping up with him.

The rest of the evening was taken up with Shostakovich’s oxidized “Festive” Overture, Khachaturian’s “Masquerade” Suite--which some might say masquerades as music--and Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture. All were led efficiently by the conductor in a once-over-lightly fashion. The orchestra responded with alacrity and fluency, despite obvious flaws in individual execution.