Classical Staples Animated by Young Energy

One thing--perhaps the most important thing--you can expect from a young orchestra is enthusiasm, which the UCLA Philharmonia Orchestra has in abundance. Conductor Jon Robertson doesn’t have to go much beyond a repertory of restrained, even minute gestures to summon this energy; it just bubbles over like a natural force.

As a result, you could get a charge out of parts of a Tuesday night program at UCLA of mainstream Beethoven and Brahms that formed a sandwich around “Caldera With Ice Cave” by longtime faculty member Paul Reale.

Reale’s two-movement, 22-minute work for piano and string orchestra was inspired by a visit to New Mexico’s Bandera Volcano and Ice Cave; his program note states: “The piano is like a wandering naturalist in confrontation with the apparently unnatural caldera with its ice cave.”

To this set of ears, wandering is the operative word, for the piano seems to stab or meander in a daze within an amorphous, neo-Classical-tinged, sometimes polytonal setting. Walter Ponce was the piano soloist, and dynamic levels were often unyieldingly loud in the small auditorium that is, amid mea culpas, once again known as Schoenberg Hall.

Robertson was able to impart a few subtleties to Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, but this was mostly a performance of coarse energy at high volume. The best part of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was the turbo-charged finale, which had sharp rhythms and a marvelous visceral punch that more refined (or bored) professional ensembles don’t bother with.