Wijnbergen Resurfaces as a Jazzy Piano Soloist for Symphony in the Glen

As managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Willem Wijnbergen was very much in the public eye. So was his abrupt departure in June 1999 from that position--over “serious issues,” in the words of a letter, later construed as a letter of resignation, that he wrote to the board. He had been on the job just 15 months. Neither party will comment further on the issues or the departure. Since then, Wijnbergen has kept a low public profile.

But on Sunday, he reappeared, this time as soloist in Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Before a sizable family audience relaxing on blankets and beach chairs near the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, Wijnbergen closed a five-part “American Landscape” program by Arthur B. Rubinstein’s enterprising Symphony in the Glen.

He had a right to be there. In addition to getting his degree in business administration, he trained as a concert pianist and conductor in Europe, and performed in both roles over a 15-year period.

He joined the board of Symphony in the Glen about six months ago because “I support its people and its mission,” he said by phone Friday before the concert.

“They give free concerts basically for new audiences, which I think is a marvelous initiative. It’s really a labor of love, what they’re doing, and it’s really driven by [Rubinstein’s] enthusiasm to reach out to new audiences. I just do this as my way of contributing to the organization.”

In discussing future programming with Rubinstein, he had mentioned how much fun it had been when he played the “Rhapsody.”

“I said it would be great to do it again. That’s how I got into this trouble.”

Trouble, however, is not what it turned out to be. Wijnbergen gave more than a respectable performance. He brought to the work one of the key ingredients missing in many performances: a sense of personal improvisation.

He was both meditative and jazzy, knowing how to savor and how to swing the score.

With the orchestra reduced to about 20 to approximate Gershwin’s original band version, Wijnbergen and Rubinstein ranged agilely between a symphonic and a rooty-tooty approach to the music, shaping the big blues tune lovingly into an American anthem.

Clarinetist Gary Bovyer swept through the famous glissade opening with stylish panache.

Rubinstein opened the concert with Copland’s unjustly neglected “Prairie Journal,” an appealing piece in Copland’s populist style. It evokes tender, ominous and dancing moods and suggest sweeping landscapes.

Originally titled “Music for Radio,” Copland’s 1937 piece was renamed by the composer after the listening audience was invited to suggest possible subtitles.

Like “Prairie Journal,” Rubinstein’s new three-part “Symphonic Suite” will get its final name from submissions from the audience. The name will be announced at a later Symphony in the Glen concert.

Rubinstein said from the stage that the 17-minute work depicts the “evolution of Los Angeles from desert to city,” and indeed the work evokes such pictures.

It opens with dry, percussive taps, moves into rippling arpeggios and ends with a montage of urban rhythms. One of its most effective moments is a shimmering “new day dawning” tune that appears before the percussive, whirligig coda.

Even more neglected than “Prairie Journal” is the entire output of African American composer William Grant Still. Rubinstein led an affectionate account of Still’s three “Danzas de Panama,” a lovely work that embodies a gentle and sophisticated spirit more than it reflects a peppery tourist poster.

The conductor closed the program with Virgil Thompson’s seminal suite from the 1936 WPA documentary film, “The Plow That Broke the Plains.” (The WPA later blacklisted the film because of its criticism of the government.)

The score predates and uses some of the same cowboy tunes that Copland employed in the ballet score “Billy the Kid” and also shows the French-filtered clarity and directness both composers manipulated in forging a distinctly American sound. More important, it uses the unexpected--blues sounds for the expansive over-farming--to make an ironic commentary on the otherwise upbeat visuals.

Mitchell Ryan was the powerful narrator.