MUSIC REVIEWS : USC Musicians Show Strong Offense

Playing before an enthusiastic home crowd Wednesday night, the USC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Lewis filled the cozy confines of Bovard Auditorium with the sounds of exuberant virtuosity in a program of Benjamin Britten, Morten Lauridsen and Peter Tchaikovsky.

Britten’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, opening the concert, could have been a highlights film all by itself. Apparently conceived by Lewis as a no-nonsense display of instrumental firepower, the performance by the orchestra gave him such responsive brilliance, from the woodwind solos to the remarkable string intonation to Tina Curtis’ poetically nuanced timpani strokes, that the piece seemed to end much too quickly.

Next, Lauridsen’s “Mid-Winter Songs on Poems by Robert Graves,” performed with the addition of the USC Chamber Singers and Concert Choir, seemed an odd choice, coming at the end of a winter in a place where winter never really comes.

The fact that the 17-minute cycle has received numerous performances in Southern California, both in piano and orchestral dress, is not surprising considering the affecting consolation of its conservative tonal optimism and spirituality. But this performance was merely dutiful and the youthful musicians missed the deep emotional underpinnings of the Robert Graves poems.

After intermission, Daniel Pollack took the stage and turned in a commanding if occasionally plodding performance of Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto. Playing on a clattery Steinway, Pollack gave the warhorse the legitimizing benefits of a totally serious, full-blooded approach.

At first, the orchestra seemed skittish in its role but soon settled into an effective accompanying mode and embellished Pollack’s part eloquently, sweetly and urgently, as required.

On Saturday night, when these USC forces repeat the program at the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, they ought to knock Orange County’s socks off.