MUSIC REVIEW : Gilad Takes a Turn at Helm of Symphony

Another in a continuing series of concert auditions for the conductorship of the American Youth Symphony took place Sunday night in Wadsworth Theater when Yehuda Gilad led works of Wagner and Dvorak.

Gilad, a well-known presence hereabouts and leader of his own youth groups at Malibu’s Strawberry Creek Festival, was his usual meticulous, tasteful and intelligent self. He worked well with the AYS, though some of the fire long associated with this ensemble was missing.

This was partially due, no doubt, to the dampening acoustics of the Wadsworth. But Gilad is a cool musician, one whose thoughts are heard before his emotions, and who attends to tidiness, articulation and texture with diligence.

Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony thus emerged rhythmically crisp and charmingly colored. Neatness in execution was the rule, an effortful violin passage or ensemble jitter the exception. Balances were sometimes strange: a lost flute in the finale, horns bursting out all over. But this was the hall’s fault, mainly.

The performance pleased in its elegant way, but the work’s bittersweet qualities seemed understated. Similarly, Gilad’s traversal of the Prelude to Act I of “Lohengrin” laid out its amorphous rhythms and textures clearly and controlled its single arch purposefully but sounded just a little studied.

In between those two works, came the infrequently heard 1929 Viola Concerto by Walton, with Donald McInnes as soloist. Ruggedly counterpointed, by turns melancholic and romping, Walton’s Concerto has a forceful and graceful solo part and an astute, peppery orchestration. It gives off heat, entertains, has lyrical eloquence. Some intonational slips aside, McInnes offered an able performance, big-toned and fluid. Gilad and orchestra managed the bustling accompaniment nimbly.