Fighting a Weight Problem

Marin Alsop and Pacific Symphony music director Carl St.Clair both had early training at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where they were conducting fellows in the ‘80s. So maybe she was comfortable with the weighty, Germanic sound of the orchestra she inherited from him as a guest this week.

But for some of us, the ghost of Richard Wagner, courtesy of St.Clair-Alsop, made a strange bedfellow for Samuel Barber, Max Bruch and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in a Wednesday program at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

A less sparkling, vivacious and witty account of Barber’s Overture to “The School for Scandal” would be hard to imagine, while Alsop’s eccentric tempos and ponderous approach to Rimsky’s “Scheherazade” managed to lock the irresistible appeal of that decadently gorgeous showpiece into plastic.

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In the case of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, however, the main problem lay with the erratic soloist, Maria Bachmann. Besides a startling misadventure into the wrong key, the young violinist rarely was able to project sufficient articulation of phrase to mine the depths of this music. Some warmth and polish, yes; soulful emotion, no.

Alsop’s pedestrian accompaniment did not enhance the experience either.

In general, the orchestra sounded stylistically more like a collection of separate and unrelated sections than a unified ensemble, although each exhibited some independent virtues. The problematic Segerstrom Hall acoustics only helped accentuate the muddy orchestral textures.

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Bassoonist David Riddles deserved special praise for sustaining breath during Alsop’s agonizingly slow opening of the second of the Scheherazade tales, while the cellos, under the leadership of Timothy Landauer, somehow managed to suggest the genuine expressive potential in the music for the third, Alsop’s indifferent leadership notwithstanding.

Violinist Sheryl Staples made Rimsky’s score an occasion for a sweet, insinuating valedictory in her role as concertmaster, but she will be back in May, as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Concerto with St.Clair and the orchestra.