MUSIC REVIEW : American Youth Symphony Plays With Usual Flair

Mehli Mehta and his American Youth Symphony gave performances of Schubert’s last two symphonies Sunday night that had all the subtlety of a band concert in the park.

Speeds were fast and exciting, dynamics were loud and louder still, and the brass blazed with a passion usually smoothed over in readings by more sophisticated and seasoned orchestras.

The approach worked best in the second half, where the sheer necessity of getting through 45 relentless minutes of the C-major Symphony, No. 9, before physical exhaustion set in coincided with Mehta’s relatively uncomplicated, heroic vision of the music.

Even though he often wagged his head ferociously and used his hands frantically in efforts to quiet down his enthusiastic charges, their youthful exuberance and the sheer size of their numbers--more than 60 string players alone filled the stage in Royce Hall at UCLA almost to overflowing--resulted in nothing quieter than an occasional and hard-won mezzo forte.

Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, which opened the program, fared less well, its familiar blending of slight thematic fragments and fragile emotions yielding their secrets less willingly to Mehta’s restless giving of cues. Still, there were some lovely solos from the clarinet section and the famous tune in the first movement sang with pleasant, naive charm.

In Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto, the evening’s centerpiece, however, soloist Evan Drachman let the side down.

Though he resembled his illustrious grandfather, Gregor Piatigorsky, in his towering height and commanding stage presence, the 29-year-old Massachusetts native was too often overwhelmed by Schumann’s very difficult, highly idiosyncratic writing. And although Piatigorsky’s rarely heard, third-movement cadenza was a gracious gesture on Drachman’s part, it inappropriately substituted charm and virtuosity for the pain and pathos of the one Schumann himself composed.