Programming Concept Ties Galway’s Fingers

You didn’t leave James Galway’s concert Saturday night at Veterans Wadsworth Theater feeling especially well nourished. Dictated somewhat by circumstances, the program was light and very safe and, for one considerable stretch, downright boring.

Someone had decided that it was a good idea for the lovable Irish flutist to tour with the Tokyo String Quartet, thereby handcuffing him to an insubstantial repertory. The great composers have not concerned themselves much with the combination of flute and strings.

So, together these musicians visited some of the usual suspects. Mozart’s Flute Quartet, K. 285, is of course a fine work, but not exactly deep philosophy. Galway and company gave it a clean and easy account, without undue fuss.

Beethoven’s Serenade, Opus 25, for flute, violin and viola, is an early and wholly uncharacteristic work, and a lively one, too, fascinating for its fanfares and counterpoints, as well as its successful combining of instruments. Still, it’s salad, not meat.

It remained to find a closer, and here Galway proved unfortunate in his choice. Anton Reicha (1770-1836) was a valued teacher of such composers as Berlioz, Liszt and Franck, but a decidedly third-rate composer. His Quintet, Opus 105, was painfully free of inspiration, and these players could do nothing for it.

The one substantive work on the program was Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1, “From My Life,” a bona fide masterpiece. It was good to hear the Tokyo Quartet’s new first violinist, Mikhail Kopelman, who came over after 20 years with the Borodin Quartet, fit in so well, and it was good to hear the probing, elastic performance. But the acoustically challenged Wadsworth sapped most of the drama and color from the music.

In encore, Galway et al offered a Scottish ditty a la Mozart, and the Badinerie from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2. La-di-da. With a little more searching (into works by Reger, Haydn, Tovey or perhaps even the commission of a new work), this concert could have been a whole lot more fulfilling.

James Galway and the Tokyo Quartet play Mozart, Beethoven, Reicha and Haydn’s String Quartet, Opus 76, No. 2, tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 300 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, (714) 740-7878. 8 p.m. $13-$42.