Music Reviews : Long Beach Symphony in Larsen Premiere

Some things are unavoidable; good fortune, serendipity and positive vibes go only so far. Successful organizations accomplish their missions by paying their dues in full. In the case of the Long Beach Symphony, an excellent band that meets only a few times a year, those dues must now include more performances by the orchestra, together.

As shown again at the second concert of the ensemble’s new season, Saturday night in Terrace Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center, goodwill and extra attentiveness are no substitute for long acquaintance between players and long rehearsals of each program.

In Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, the occasion for such thoughts, music director JoAnn Falletta led a smooth, uneventful reading momentarily marred by overplaying, misbalances and lapses of instrumental confidence--all attributable to the ad-hoc nature of the ensemble. Good work, too often unpolished.

Still, one had to be grateful for the conductor’s clear Brahmsian vision, as one was also pleased to be reintroduced earlier to Kalinnikov’s practically forgotten but handsome Overture to “Tsar Boris.”

The world premiere of Libby Larsen’s colorful and virtuosic “Marimba Concerto: After Hampton,” with William Moersch the protagonist--assisted by percussion colleagues Lynda Sue Marks, William Carpenter and Kent Hannibal--lived up to its promise.

The new work pays homage to three separate, complementary styles in the jazzy, relaxed motions of the first movement, the darker, night-music aspects of the slow movement and the more spicily atonal climaxes in the finale. The four soloists, plus all of Falletta’s forces, made it work. At the end, composer Larsen shared extensive bows.