Foster Leads an Inspiring Beethoven at the Bowl

Time was when--back in the 1950s, say--Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony regularly capped the Hollywood Bowl season, ending the summer with its unique musical glories. By contrast, in this festive year of 2000, the Ninth Symphony was a starting point of sorts, preceding the classical-concert subscription season, which starts July 11, by a couple of weeks.

No matter. The Ninth heard at the Bowl Thursday night, with the redoubtable Lawrence Foster conducting the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, members of the Pacific Chorale and four strong solo singers, emerged as properly awesome and inspiring--as one might have expected, given this leader.

Lawrence Foster is the right person to challenge the Debut Orchestra with this assignment. At 58, a veteran of international music directorships, he began his conducting career here in his hometown, leading the Debut Orchestra in the 1960s.

That wide-ranging career has been musically solid rather than glamorous, characterized by breadth, authority and a probing intellect. Foster has excelled in opera as well as in the symphonic repertory, with never less than strongly conceived, thoroughly penetrating readings of music in a variety of styles.

His regular, virtually annual, visits to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Opera have been special events in those organizations’ ongoing histories.

This Ninth Symphony by the Debut Orchestra, obviously well prepared, turned out to be an another showcase of Foster’s well-exposed talents. His overall view of the work put the climaxes where they reside--in the slow movement and the choral finale, “Ode to Joy,” using the opening movements as dramatic preludes to the cathartic action that follows.

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The 92 young players--the Debut Orchestra is a pre-professional training ensemble--warmed up slowly and began to flesh out their orchestral sound by the middle of the scherzo. Wonderful soloism from the woodwinds marked the slow movement, abetted by the now-full-throated string section and noble playing from the horns.

Dean Ely brought an apparently large (it’s hard to tell for sure, given the venue and the amplification) and highly attractive bass-baritone to bear on the crucial, opening vocal solo in the finale; he followed through with genuine power and word-coloring.

His colleagues, all authoritative, each mostly unfazed by the high-lying difficulties here posed, were soprano Meagan Miller, mezzo-soprano Teresa Brown and tenor Richard Clement.

Except for momentary unpolished sounds emanating from the male sections, members of the Pacific Chorale sang stylishly, enthusiastically and with good, blended tone. Throughout, but particularly in the finale, Foster’s leadership maintained a sense of continuity in the face of Beethoven’s famous sharding.