MUSIC REVIEW : Symphony Works Up a Tempest

No soloists graced the Arlington Theatre stage Saturday, as the Santa Barbara Symphony continued its season and its quest for a conductor. That left the spotlight trained on this month’s candidate for the position: John Giordano, who huffed and puffed and ably led the orchestra into mostly romantic, tempestuous musical battle.

Giordano, who has led both the Ft. Worth Symphony and the Ft. Worth Chamber Orchestra for many years, happily seized said spotlight in a strangely uneven program of Bach, Barber and Rachmaninoff. This orchestra has been notably remiss in its recognition of 20th-Century music. Ironically, although two-thirds of this program came from our century, the musical language was backward-looking. Likewise the concert.

In effect, Bach’s popular Suite No. 3 in D served as a perfunctory formal introduction--despite the timeless beauty of the “Air”--for Barber’s early Symphony No. 1 and Rachmaninoff’s swan song, “Symphonic Dances.” With the baroque restraint out of the way, Giordano went to town, relishing the multiple climaxes and fickle dynamics, wringing crescendos for all their worth and savoring the quiet passages.

In the 1936 Barber work, classical in form and romantic by instinct, the Vivace found the orchestra working up an insistent piston-pumping pulse, almost pre-minimalist in effect. Later, the players achieved a proper pitch of manic brooding over that ominous ostinato from the expanded double-bass section.

Genteel melodic gestures gave way to Russian rusticity in Rachmaninoff. Especially persuasive was the orchestra’s reading of the second movement’s restless waltz, seemingly fueled by a surreptitious passion.

Programming questions aside, this soloist-free presentation cast due attention on the musical ranks. Regardless of who wields the baton and quakes with authority on the podium, this is a group of power and luster.