THE CUTTING EDGE: FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY

The Long Beach Symphony’s “Year of the Search” began well Saturday night at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center when Alasdair Neale, first of five candidates for the orchestra’s post of music director, ascended the podium. If the next four achieve the brilliant results that Neale did, in a demanding test-program of works by Berlioz, Mendelssohn and Prokofiev, this 66th orchestral season will be a fascinating race to follow.

The British-born Neale, who has been associate conductor at the San Francisco Symphony for eight years, impressed through his calm, his confidence and the compelling intelligence of his choices. He both makes and lets things happen: He shapes and forms the music at hand but stops short of overtight control.

The orchestra’s strongest playing came in Prokofiev’s lyrically expansive, emotionally cathartic Fifth Symphony, a canvas of many colors and a dynamic range. Neale coaxed the players into delineating all the hues in a broad spectrum; he let solo voices shine, as they should, but all parts of the orchestra responded handsomely and with exuberance.

It didn’t hurt, of course, that former music director JoAnn Falletta had left her orchestra, at the end of last season, in the best musical shape of its history.

The orchestra also played brightly and with genuine enthusiasm for Cristina Ortiz’s happy revival of Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto. Now in mid-career, the Brazilian pianist still has temperament to burn, highly controlled technique and a projected sense of musical rightness in everything she plays.

She produced all the heat, speed and proper restraint required in the outer movements and truly irresistible charm in the central andante. One wants now to hear her in a recital that will confirm her reputed versatility. Neale and the orchestra collaborated judiciously.

To start the program, guest conductor Neale presided over a bright and mellow performance of Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival” Overture. Before that, he led a forceful, impressive run-through of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Still under 40, he is a conductor whose gifts and achievement bear watching.

A radio broadcast of this concert will be played on KMZT-FM (105.1), Nov. 12 at 8 p.m.