MUSIC REVIEW : Concert Fitting for Mexico Trip

For San Diego Symphony patrons who were not flying with the orchestra to the Yucatan to hear its Columbus Day concert at Mexico’s Chichen Itza ruins, music director Yoav Talmi conducted a preview program Friday night at Copley Symphony Hall. Although the orchestra performed with warmth and laudable discipline, it was an unconventional musical offering. Lacking either concerto or symphony, it was not the sort of program an aspiring orchestra would take, say, to San Francisco or New York City.

But it was tailored to the Yucatan event, as Talmi explained in his genial explanations from the podium. There were short pieces by Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber, symbolic of the visiting U.S. orchestra, and “La Noche de los Mayas” (“The Night of the Mayas”) by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, a toast to the host country.

Saluting the country of Columbus’ birth, the orchestra gave a thoughtfully paced and at times spirited account of Verdi’s Overture to the opera “I Vespri Siciliani.” Although Stravinsky’s 1919 suite from his ballet “The Firebird” lacked an evident thematic tie, Talmi noted that the colorful piece about a mythical sacred bird was requested by the Yucatan government officials who hosted the concert.

In “The Firebird,” Talmi and the orchestra mined the composer’s neoclassically revised score for its Romantic roots, savoring lithe melodic flights and giving the deftly scored string sections a delicate luster. Conducting from memory, Talmi demonstrated his ample empathy for Stravinsky, a composer championed by his podium predecessor, David Atherton. If the British maestro brought rhythmic vigor and a keen ear for architecture to Stravinsky, Talmi focused on the composer’s lyrical subtleties.

Revueltas’ “La Noche de los Mayas,” four movements carved out of his 1939 motion picture score, exudes the nationalistic fervor of Aaron Copland’s folksy tone poems from the same decade. A dozen percussion players spread across the back of the stage infused the score with authentic color. Some played traditional Mayan drums and shakers, and a French horn player doubled on a large, tuned conch shell. Fortunately, Talmi’s strong rhythmic emphasis and the brass sections’ brilliance redeemed the score’s overly static tendencies.

Talmi gives Barber’s Adagio for Strings a relentlessly somber interpretation (he conducted it here last spring), but Friday night the strings gave a most ingratiating, unforced performance of the work. Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which they played at last week’s season-opening concert, still awaits a note-perfect reading by the local band.

Although the orchestra rarely indulges in encores, they reprised a fanfare-filled snippet from last week’s “Carmina Burana” score. No doubt they wish to be ready to gift their Mexican audience with this bouncy bonus at tonight’s concert.