MUSIC REVIEWS : New West Symphony in Promising Debut

Say what you will about the recently formed New West Symphony--and opinions abound --but don’t say it is not a promising ensemble.

As heard at the orchestra’s first-ever public performance, Friday night in year-old Charles E. Probst Center Theater at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, the 80-member orchestra--often scruffy, unpolished and inconsistent--showed even more promise than one heard in 1994 from the Ventura County Symphony, which merged with the Conejo Symphony to form the present body.

Orchestras are not made in a few months, of course, and virtuoso ones need a long period of maturing to fulfill their promise, but this one clearly has good components. Brilliant upper strings, mellow lower ones, excellent woodwinds and crackerjack brass are entry-level qualities in this gifted orchestra. As they say in biology, the genes are good.

As he showed Friday, Music Director Boris Brott may be the right conductor to lead the new ensemble into high achievement. Even with many unrealized balances and rough instrumental cohesion, Berlioz’s program-closing “Symphonie Fantastique” showed the well-honed skills of these individual players--and the upward direction of their growth.

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Similarly bright and virtuosic, Brott’s sweeping account of the waltz-suite from Richard Strauss’ “Rosenkavalier” displayed the orchestra’s abilities strongly.

To begin, Brott chose not to recycle any of yesterday’s musical news, but to introduce a solid but accessible and brand-new piece, John Biggs’ folkloric, emotionally resonant “Ballad of William Sycamore,” an orchestral suite with narration of Stephen Vincent Benet’s text.

The Ventura County composer’s music--tuneful, polytonal or grating, as appropriate--adds meaning and substance to the poem. The text here was intoned clearly by Michael Gallup, whose every word traveled undistorted throughout the 1,800-seat auditorium.