MUSIC REVIEW : Asian Orchestra: Strong Group Having an Inconsistent Night

Over the past decade, and even longer, a lengthy parade of visiting orchestras has made Hollywood Bowl our preeminent summer symphonic showcase.

Joining this parade Wednesday night was the 95-player Asian Youth Orchestra, an ambitious, ad-hoc assemblage of instrumentalists from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and other Pacific Rim countries. The ensemble is led on the current tour by veteran conductor Sergiu Comissiona; soloist at the Bowl was the 25-year-old American violinist Anne Akiko Meyers.

With clearly good intentions--the visit is officially connected to the 50th anniversary of the United Nations--and measurable accomplishment, the orchestra, like most youth ensembles, plays impressively but inconsistently. Player fatigue and burnout were as much on display at this debut as musical discipline and exuberance. By the end of Wednesday evening, one realized that this was a strong band having a poor night.

Comissiona’s steady but uninspiring leadership did not raise the energy level. He conducted the program-closing “Pictures at an Exhibition”--Mussorgsky’s suite in the familiar Ravel orchestration--stoically, without making its promenades and vistas urgent or even very colorful. Mood and characterization did not emerge in this reading, merely the right notes in often-skewed balances. The players seemed to lack the requisite images in their minds.

In Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, both soloist Meyers and the conductor failed to lead the way. The result was an often-static sense of movement, despite Meyers’ handsome tone, clear rapport with the piece and easy traversal of its virtuosic difficulties. A lovely performance stuck on a plateau of low-energy and sagging tempos. . . .

At the beginning, and after eschewing our national anthem, the orchestra offered, for an estimated 6,242 listeners, a bright but sometimes tense, sometimes ill-tuned account of Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture.