MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : Symphony Finds Stylistic Balance

Saturday at the Terrace Theater, the Long Beach Symphony, under conductor JoAnn Falletta’s able guidance, delivered all the right stuff for a refreshing yet subscriber-friendly program. No easy feat, that. The closest thing to a concert staple was Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite,” following a world premiere of a challenging work by the Cambodia-born, UC San Diego-based composer Chinary Ung.

Yet the concert’s first half was taken up with lesser-played works from the epochal bosom of the ever-popular, over-popular 19th Century. It was a program, in short, with something for most everyone. To boot, the orchestra was in fine mettle.

Falletta’s taut but flexible hand was evident on Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Haydn, in a neatly-outfitted reading of music in which Classicism is altered by a Romantic prism. In-house resources were showcased when the horn section moved upstage for Schumann’s Konzertstu for Four Horns. The players mustered a euphonious collective voice, even though periodic flubbed notes and intonational slippages marred the whole.

Highlighting this concert was Ung’s fascinating “Antiphonal Spirals,” which, as the composer explained from the stage, “manipulates the concept of time.” In this excitingly dense--yet also impressionistic--work, Ung is also tinkering with layerings and orchestral colors, exploring new ways of dealing with the institution of the Western symphony orchestra. The final result sounds almost Ives-ian--albeit with an Asian sensibility--in its rippling, multidimensional surface, paring down, in the end, to a single note.

Falletta et al essayed on the “Firebird” with a clarity that dignified the work’s majesty, brute force and enigmatic beauty, validating this orchestra’s bold reputation for making music a lively art.