Sheer Magnetism Does It for Salerno-Sonnenberg

Fueled by a lot of publicity, a Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg concert has almost become like a highly dramatic sporting event--what will the outcome be?

She appeared on the Orange County Performing Arts Center stage Wednesday night in what could have passed for street clothes. She grimaced at every emotional climax, swaggered back and forth, at one point huffing and puffing like a wrestler getting a second wind. She pulled the phrases of the first movement of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 around like taffy, reducing her tone to self-pitying whimpers in the Adagio, fidgeting around nervously when Carl St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony were playing on their own. She inspires a morbid curiosity, as if she might crack up right then and there.

But you can’t deny that Salerno-Sonnenberg draws you in--and that’s no mean feat when it comes to this often-flogged warhorse. She won’t convince you that the Bruch is profound music, but she will make you hang breathlessly on every note--the mark of a magnetic performer.

As an encore, Salerno-Sonnenberg offered a sample of her crossover experiments, a sly, slithering performance of Heifetz’s transcription of Gershwin’s “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” with string orchestra backing. And in Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 after intermission, you could spot her in the last row of violins (in a black concert outfit!) unobtrusively playing along. Tough-chick image aside, the woman clearly loves music.

St.Clair displayed a flair for theatrical, hyper-nervous gestures in the Brahms, but this time, there was a sense of disconnect between what one saw and what one heard. The concept was straight-ahead, with swollen textures and not much tension, and the orchestra played along with casual expertise and little fire. However the Texas-raised St.Clair could identify strongly with one of Tobias Picker’s most attractive pieces, the brief, peacefully flowing “Old and Lost Rivers.” An impression of two converging bayous near Houston, Picker’s music conjures a feeling of Americana as winningly as any Copland soundscape.