MUSIC REVIEW : Tchaikovsky Makes for a Pleasant Night

Forget the fireworks--a happy bonus at best. What audiences come for at a Tchaikovsky Spectacular--for example, the 10,779 listeners who showed up at the eighth annual such event given by Pacific Symphony at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre Saturday night--is the music. Tchaikovsky’s scores are the aural equivalent of comfort food: reassuring, tasty, hearty and warm.

As conducted affectionately by Edward Cumming and played by a Pacific Symphony contingent measurably lacking in familiar faces, four of these works--”Capriccio Italien,” “Romeo and Juliet,” the Violin Concerto and the “1812” Overture--restated the composer’s deserved popularity. It would have been difficult to leave the outdoor showplace unhappy on this occasion.

Still, not all the remembered passion and energy in this music materialized.

Clearly an efficient musical guide, Cumming--assistant conductor of the orchestra--did not in every moment remind his players how urgent all these emotionally ascending musical lines have to be to reach the unengaged. Merely playing through these works, even as cleanly and neatly as the orchestra did at this, its final summer performance, is not enough.

Strong instrumentalism, though at low levels of musical heat, characterized the honest playing achieved before intermission, when Cumming led nicely detailed performances of “Capriccio Italien” and the “Romeo” fantasy overture. The heat was turned up for the closer, the “1812” Overture, accompanied by a pleasant, if one-dimensional, fireworks show better viewed by the patrons in the cheap seats than by those located closer to the stage.

The high point of this event was the return of Eugene Fodor, the internationally prize-winning, Colorado-born 44-year-old American violinist.

Fodor revived the familiar Violin Concerto with poignancy, an effortless brilliance and myriad details of articulation and suave tone. Of course, he sailed through the difficulties without mishap. More important, he allowed over-recognizable tunes their pristine emotions, giving them a fresh sincerity with which to touch listeners anew. Cumming & Company provided deep support.

Moving indoors, and back to its winter home in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Pacific Symphony will begin its next season Oct. 19-20.