Diemecke Makes a Confident Bid for Long Beach Post

Enrique Arturo Diemecke is probably the best-known of the contenders this season for the music directorship of the Long Beach Symphony. Currently leading the National Symphony of Mexico, Diemecke has conducted here before with both local and visiting orchestras. Saturday, it was his turn to make his case on the podium at Terrace Theater, and he did so with confident flair.

His big statement was a “New World” Symphony of luxuriant, heady detail--almost too much, particularly at the drawn-out close of the Largo, which seemed to end half a dozen times, with each additional step sounding increasingly redundant. But there was also power--carefully controlled and guided--and passion to his highly personalized interpretation of Dvorak’s familiar piece.

He worked from memory and without baton, eliciting eager, attentive playing over a huge dynamic range. The Long Beach woodwinds were once again a source of real delight, with Joan Elardo’s sweet and supple English horn solo only the most obvious contribution.

Diemecke is a noted champion of less conventional music, and a sometime composer himself. He opened with his “Chacona a Chavez,” a sassy orchestration of a keyboard chaconne by Handel in tribute to Carlos Chavez. An enormous confection of multiple references and allusions, it relies on hot, colorful whimsy, fulfilled abundantly here.

Soloist Corey Cerovsek offered another model of expressive nuance in Barber’s Violin Concerto, handsomely accompanied by Diemecke. Cerovsek played with precision and eloquence, pure in tone and sure in motivation. In encore he delivered a dazzling account of Kreisler’s Recitative and Scherzo.