MUSIC REVIEW : Cancellation of Premiere Deprives Concert of Luster

The cancellation of the premiere of Roger Reynolds’ “Dreaming” reduced Friday’s San Diego Symphony concert to business as usual at Copley Symphony Hall. The new work by San Diego’s resident Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and respected member of the UC San Diego music faculty surely would have challenged complacent ears and brought a much-needed sense of adventure to music director Yoav Talmi’s circumscribed palette of programming.

In 1989, under the guidance of artistic adviser Lynn Harrell, the symphony played and recorded two of Reynolds’ complex, probing orchestral scores, including his prize-winning “Whispers Out of Time.” Since Talmi became music director in 1990, no project of similar daring has been undertaken.

Whatever the immediate reasons for rescheduling Reynolds’ “Dreaming” in the 1993-94 season may be, the lack of communication between Talmi and Reynolds that precipitated the cancellation is disturbing. Former symphony music director David Atherton enjoyed a collegial relationship with Bernard Rands, a former UCSD composer who also won a Pulitzer. Rands not only served as the symphony’s composer in residence for three years, but he also conducted the orchestra on occasion. In this case, Atherton’s precedent is worthy of emulation.

In place of Reynolds’ “Dreaming,” Talmi opened Friday’s concert with “The Birds,” a clever, opulently orchestrated neoclassical suite by Ottorino Respighi. While Stravinsky, Bartok and Schoenberg were redefining Western music in the 1920s, Respighi produced accessible, perfumed pastiches such as “The Birds.” Talmi and the orchestra made the most of the score, deftly tracing the composer’s elegant lines and conjuring his atmospheric textures. But the substitution of a puff pastry for the first course was less than satisfying.

Fortunately, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum infused Robert Schumann’s rhapsodic Cello Concerto with a taut determination and eloquent reflection that gave the program much-needed substance and focus. To the rambling, monochromatic work, Kirshbaum brought a sense of drama that both propelled and shaped the concerto. His slightly reedy timbre--as opposed to the glossy, competition-inspired sounds too many younger cellists adopt--invoked the work’s brooding undercurrent. Notable were the clarity of his figuration in the finale and his luminous double stops in the cadenza. The orchestra’s accompaniment hovered in the background, at times behind the soloist’s immaculate pulse.

Bizet’s Symphony in C completed the program. Conducting without a score, Talmi coaxed a heartfelt and at times buoyant reading of the youthful work from the orchestra, whose overall ensemble was compromised by missed notes in the horn section.