MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : No Surprises From Long Beach, Falletta

A virtual pops program made up the third concert of the Long Beach Symphony’s 60th anniversary season, and music director JoAnn Falletta conducted it with her usual solid professionalism.

The orchestra sounded healthy in Terrace Theater Saturday night, playing neatly, loudly, softly and fluently. For most, it would appear, this is more than enough in such familiar repertory as Grieg’s Piano Concerto and Holst’s “The Planets.”

For a particular listener, however, it seemed as if these musicians felt no inner need to play these works. Falletta valued order and ease above all, slighting details and characterization in conducting generic performances. The orchestra did not reach beyond her requirements.

This despite plenty of athletic and hefty playing in the Holst--but this is an ensemble full of good musicians; they can make these sounds in the first rehearsal. The finer (and some of the broader) points of representation--like the mischievous swagger in “Uranus, the Magician,” or the ethereal, seamless shimmer of “Neptune, the Mystic,” or the heave-ho folksiness of “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity”--failed to materialize.

It was good to hear Andre-Michel Schub, though, as soloist in the Grieg Concerto. He played it with gusto and care, bringing a wonderful clarity of texture and rhythm to the more bombastic passages while still capturing their thunder. Falletta’s accompaniment stayed out of the way .

In a faint nod to the new, the concert opened with Bruce MacCombie’s 1991 “Chelsea Tango,”11 minutes of mostly quiet, mostly mundane, very repetitive Latin dance music. A more insinuating performance would have helped it.