A Fresh Long Beach Symphony Program

Celebrated Long Beach Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta surrendered her baton Saturday at the Terrace Theater to the able guest conductor Alvaro Cassuto. Not to worry: The orchestra was in good hands, as the Portuguese-born maestro coaxed a sonorous collective luster.

It was also business as refreshingly unusual in Long Beach’s programming department. Apart from the familiarity of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, the program consisted of music from Portuguese composer Joly Braga Santos and the 19th century American composer Edward MacDowell.

MacDowell (1860-1908) is one of those relatively neglected figures in American musical history, and it’s an understandable oversight. Trained in Europe, MacDowell bears the signature of a Eurocentric composer with the gushing instincts of a Romantic abroad, and one with nothing particularly new to add to the language.

One can admire the spirit if not the specifics of his Second Piano Concerto, which leans admiringly toward Grieg. The main purpose the work served, in Long Beach, was as a vehicle for the conspicuous gifts of pianist James Barbagallo, who brought flowing pyrotechnics to this virtuosic workout.

The strident-sounding Three Symphonic Sketches of Braga Santos pushes tonalism nearly to the breaking point. If the 1961 piece lacks focus, the orchestral forces mustered the proper precision-geared thunder for the occasion. That same clarity-cum-muscularity was also evident in the Shostakovich, in addition to a jaunty snap in the second movement and a slow-burning languor in the tragic-waxing third movement.