MUSIC REVIEW : Symphony Shows Effect of Tiring Trip

With only a day of recuperation between the San Diego Symphony’s return from its four-day Mexican trip and Thursday night’s concert, the orchestra sounded understandably fatigued. Music director Yoav Talmi had selected a two-fisted Romantic program for the Copley Symphony Hall subscription concert: Brahms’ heroic Third Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s overripe Second Piano Concerto. But Thursday’s lackluster performance was more like shadowboxing.

Guest pianist Ruth Laredo compounded the problem with a fussy, highly idiosyncratic approach to the Rachmaninoff concerto. She tended to rush the first half of her phrases, which proved not only at odds with the style, but ran counter to Talmi’s tendency to stretch the composer’s grandiloquent phrases at midpoint. On occasion the orchestra rose to the work’s demands with resonant fortes. But Talmi and Laredo came together only intermittently, and the concerto sounded at loose ends much of the time.

With the exception of a smudge or two near the beginning of the third movement, Laredo’s technique was up to the challenge. Her brilliant octaves and crystalline figuration captured Rachmaninoff’s rhapsodic effusions without resorting to heavy-handed bluster. But she was marching to a very different drummer.

From Talmi’s verbal program notes delivered from the podium, and his impassioned direction of the Brahms Third Symphony, it was evident that the work is close to his heart. Conducting without a score, he traversed the podium, vigorously attending to every detail. He would turn to urge the cellos, then quickly turn his back to cajole the violins. Then he would raise his arms high overhead to summon a mighty climax.

Only rarely does Talmi indulge in such an extroverted manner of conducting. His concept of the work, however, demanded a crew with more stamina and reserve than the orchestra could provide. The mellow wind chorus that opened the gentle Andante and the sweet lyricism of the third movement proved highly satisfying. But much of the Andante sounded unfocused, and several times the orchestra’s intonation sagged.

Talmi opened the program with a reprise of Verdi’s Overture to “I Vespri Siciliani,” which the orchestra played on a non-subscription concert Oct 9. Two fanfares for orchestra by contemporary American composer John Adams had been scheduled for that slot, but a lack of rehearsal time caused Talmi to recycle the Verdi.