Driehuys Ably Conducts Santa Barbara Symphony

Diversity has reigned over the Santa Barbara Symphony for the last year, as the organization publicly seeks a new conductor by live concert auditions. Now, at mid-point in the proceedings, the concertgoers seem to be getting restless, yearning for some coherency or familiarity at the helm.

Leo Driehuys, at present director of the Charlotte Symphony and the fifth contender to take the Santa Barbara podium, led the orchestra Saturday night at the Arlington Theater in a mostly Romantic program. If short on surprises or profundity, the performance had polish and passion on its side.

Copland’s “El Salon Mexico,” played energetically, served as a meaty appetizer. The deceptively casual work, driven by polytonality, rugged rhythmic designs and vernacular evocations, still transcends its surface exoticism.

Violinist Eugene Fodor was reliably fluent in the technical and emotional challenges of Mendelssohn’s E-minor Concerto, though occasionally overwhelmed by the interwoven orchestral forces.

Mendelssohn’s restrained Romantic impulses were answered in the second half by the moodier, high-Romantic contours of Sibelius’ First Symphony, written in 1899. Between the haunting clarinet introduction and the final, post-crescendo pizzicato minor chord, the terrain is turbulent.

This first-numbered Symphony of the Finnish composer has an abstractly programmatic sweep that makes for a bold orchestral showpiece. Here, the orchestra, despite a few ragged moments, ably rode its heroic waves of feeling, with Driehuys providing lucid and able-minded direction. Whoever ultimately wins the baton in Santa Barbara, the raw orchestral materials are highly refined. All involved, on both sides of the stage, are primed for action--and continuity.