California Philharmonic’s High Spirits Carry Evening

The Festival on the Green at the L.A. County Arboretum in Arcadia is catching on, and it seems to be attracting many people who are not regular concert-goers.

The first three reasons are location, location, location--the gorgeous, tree-surrounded lawn dotted with white picnic tables that looked packed, coupled with close freeway access. Then there is conductor Victor Vener’s personality, an often nutty, curiously winning combination of summer-camp recreation director, absent-minded professor and loose cannon. You’re never sure what he’ll say.

And even though Vener’s California Philharmonic was at best a serviceable ensemble (and sometimes less than that) Saturday, and the amplified sound was often congested and constricted, you came away feeling good about the whole event-- thoroughly entertained, and even a bit wiser than you were a few hours before.

A bass trombonist’s late arrival due to a flat tire caused some reshuffling of a once-carefully sequenced, all-American program. As a result, a nervously paced, abrasively amplified performance of Barber’s Adagio for Strings was moved ahead in the program; then, when the trombonist showed up, the orchestra played Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which served ably as a surrogate national anthem.

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Grofe’s “Grand Canyon Suite” is suddenly turning up in droves, first at the Pasadena Symphony three weeks ago and now here, albeit in truncated form. Vener chose to play only “Sunrise”; “On the Trail,” in which the park’s verbose resident peacocks conversed with the orchestra’s imitations of a braying mule; and “Cloudburst,” which came off best. But he missed a good bet by not playing “Sunset” while the sun was setting over the park.

Pianist Norman Krieger devoured Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” rambunctiously characterizing everything, serving up searching rubatos and even outbreaks of Charleston rhythms, charging up the orchestra. With the Cal Philharmonic showing its best form of the night, actress Annette Bening turned in a well-synchronized, dignified, impassioned but not over-the-top reading of the text for Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait.” And Lincoln was surrounded by two flag-waving bookends: Morton Gould’s “American Salute” and a brisk “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”