MUSIC REVIEWS : Long Beach Symphony Opens 60th Year

At the beginning of its 60th season, its sixth under the music directorship of JoAnn Falletta, the Long Beach Symphony is a dependable, often sparkling orchestra.

It can take on some of the most demanding repertory--as it did Saturday night at Terrace Theater--without batting an eye. Its ensemble values are consistently smooth and professional, its fortes imposing and muscular without stridency, its member-soloists confident.

As an interpreter, Falletta, too, is a reliable commodity, an imaginative programmer who strives for the firm, center ground in her performances. She’s not much of one to emote on the podium or, for that matter, to display much of any aspect of her personality. But she handily avoids cold abstraction by getting-- allowing might be the better word--the orchestra to play in a relaxed, warm and lyrical fashion.

Falletta & orchestra’s account of the season-opening “Roman Carnival” Overture by Berlioz revealed all of the above, a neat and vital reading with the details painted in, and a velvety English horn solo from Joan Elardo.

The performance of Copland’s Third Symphony on the second half of the program left various impressions: of an orchestra quite comfortable with the technical demands of this taxing work; of a healthy brass section and impressive strings; of a conductor that wasn’t taking many risks, attempting clarity and objectivity and achieving it; of a piece of music that sometimes tries too hard to be the Great American Symphony.

Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, was the splendid soloist at the center of the evening, in Brahms’ Violin Concerto.

He offered a wonderfully spacious, sensitive and reserved account, both technically and musically commanding. He made the absence of soloistic charisma a wholly positive thing, with playing concentrated and intense yet always lovable and unforced.

Falletta’s accompaniment veered toward politeness on occasion, but proved generally warm, colored and singing.