Music : Schwarz, Seattle Symphony Are Capable but Lackluster

Gerard Schwarz doesn’t exactly set the place on fire.

Trouble is, much of the music he conducts is supposed to. After Friday night’s Seattle Symphony concert at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, one got the idea that Schwarz might make “The Rite of Spring” sound sane and luxuriant.

It’s not that the much-admired 45-year-old conductor lacks enthusiasm or commitment or ideas. His interpretations Friday were carefully crafted, well played and never--well, almost never--dull. But neither were they urgent or driven.

Now in his eighth year as music director of the Seattle Symphony, Schwarz has fashioned a distinctive sound for his ensemble. The strings--seated, unusually, with violins split and cellos and basses to the left--dominate the sonic picture, hefty, dark, robust. The woodwinds and brass, individually and ensemblewise a solid group, generally play a subsidiary role; on this occasion they seemed practically faceless.

The concert--the identical program was scheduled for repeat at the South Bay Center for the Arts, Saturday--began with Brahms’ “Tragic” Overture, in a broad, leisurely reading. The lyricism turned out not that lyrical, the dramatic declamations not that dramatic.

After intermission, Schwarz turned to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, in as low-key a reading as one is likely to hear. Part of the recipe involved keeping the woodwinds well back in the picture and horns and trumpets polite and supportive. Details were buried. Heroic accents were kept strictly in context.

Rhythmically, too, the reading disappointed; the “Dance” Symphony hardly had a springy step in it. Safe tempos, non-aggressive articulation and plush sound were the order of the evening. To be sure, the performance had its good points: Schwarz’s seamless, concentrated reading of the Allegretto, for instance, or his slow but sure accelerando to the end of the Finale, which did generate some heat. But overall it proved an admirable rather than compelling reading.

In between, the Armenian-born American violinist, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, took on the rhapsodic ruminations of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. He provided a forceful, deliberate, technically proficient account. He varied his vibrato expressively, tellingly. Yet, there was something overcontrolled about this reading; the measured emphasis never left his playing even in the work’s most syrupy moments. Schwarz accompanied with unassuming warmth. The encore, Glinka’s Overture to “Russlan and Ludmilla,” was the best thing all evening, a wonderfully fluid and fleet yet weighty performance.