Long Beach Symphony Goes With the Flow

Credit JoAnn Falletta and the Long Beach Symphony for recognizing a hot opportunity. They closed their season Saturday at Terrace Theater with a thematic program honoring the new Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Some of the music is to be recorded on the orchestra’s first CD and will be played in one of the aquarium exhibits.

But the program had nothing to do with the Pacific. Judging from Falletta’s lengthy, resolutely European agenda, you might have thought the new facility to be the Aquarium of the North Sea.

Whatever the much-debated merits of pictorial program music, many composers have heard the call of the sea. Few, though, have answered it with such durable eloquence as Debussy. Falletta took an expansive but dynamic view of “La mer,” and her orchestra filled it in with bright colors and pertinent detail, as it had also done with Henri Busser’s arrangement of Debussy’s “Cathedrale engloutie.”

Debussy set the bar rather high for Frank Bridge, who followed the 1905 “La mer” six years later with a suite of his own, also titled “The Sea.” Best known as the mentor of Benjamin Britten, Bridge was a capable craftsman and his winds and waves make a fine sound in the orchestra but no compelling impact on the listener beyond the effect of the moment.

Rounding out the watery theme more familiarly were Liadov’s placid “Enchanted Lake” and Mendelssohn’s mettlesome “Hebrides Overture.” The Long Beach strings sounded a bit lean for Mendelssohn, but shimmered nicely for Liadov.

The solo vehicle, Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 2, had no overt oceanic connections, but one could get seasick watching the swaying and bobbing work of the passionately animated Dickran Atamian. He may not have hit every note cleanly in the process, but he communicated a real sense of musical involvement and joy. Falletta and the orchestra accompanied with more sympathy than precision.