Olympic Freeze-Out

This should be a glorious time for the Utah Symphony. It performed at the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, broadcast around the world. It was prominently featured in the Olympic Arts Festival during the first week of the games. And it participates on a best-selling CD, high on the Billboard charts--John Williams’ Olympic-themed “American Journey.”

All of this--along with the fact that the orchestra’s music director, Keith Lockhart, is also music director of the Boston Pops and has a high television profile--should have made the Utah Symphony a popular attraction when it appeared Tuesday night at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Think again. At most, a couple hundred people showed up, leaving the large theater mostly empty.

Indeed, the last two weeks haven’t been nearly as glorious as they might have been for this long-respected orchestra.

The opening ceremonies were a humiliation--the organizers, fearing any outcome not predestined (an odd concept for a sports event), forced the orchestra to prerecord its contribution and then shiver in 18-degree weather pretending to play instruments borrowed from a high school (the cold could have damaged fine ones). On the broadcast, heedless television announcers gabbed over practically every note anyway.

Olympic officials, meanwhile, took over Maurice Abravanel Hall, forcing the orchestra to rent it back for its concerts in the arts festival.

This week, with no place to play in Salt Lake City, the Utah Symphony decided to visit Southern California for the first time in seven years, with two different programs. The symphonic one, designed specifically for the tour and not heard in Salt Lake City, was played Tuesday night. Also on the tour is a pops evening with Broadway singer Elaine Paige that was part of the Olympic Arts Festival.

Two themes ran through Tuesday’s concert, the program not meant for Salt Lake City. John Corigliano’s “Three Hallucinations” and Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto, on the first half, are concert works made from music originally written for Hollywood films.

The other theme was potentially scandalous. “Three Hallucinations,” which Corigliano adapted from his score to Ken Russell’s film “Altered States,” and Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” played after intermission, are extremely vivid orchestral orgies representing the psychedelic effects of hallucinogens. Corigliano’s music wigs out on magic mushrooms. Berlioz’s is stoned on opium. Both thrill an audience. Take that, Utah! Take that, Olympics!

In fact, there wasn’t all that much to get worked up about Tuesday, one way or another. Lockhart can be an odd combination of the flashy and the politely perfunctory. He conducts without a baton, with gestures lucid and animated. He likes splashy effects but nothing wild, nothing out of place.

Still, Lockhart and the Utah Symphony did a splendid job with the Corigliano.

The “Hallucinations” do not sound nearly as reckless on the concert stage as they seem in the film. For the soundtrack, Corigliano included electronics and went crazy when accompanying William Hurt’s drug-induced visions (often with the nude Blair Brown). For his symphonic suite, he restores a sense of order, and avoids the sentimental elements also in the film music. But the orchestration is full of lively effects, and they were here made vivid.

Berlioz’s symphony was given a less tidy performance. Although Lockhart never really let the orchestra go, the strings were just insecure enough in the opening reverie to make it sound woozy for the wrong reason. There was some fine virtuoso playing at times, but loud trumpets caused concern.

The legacy of Abravanel, who led the orchestra from 1947 to 1979, is still heard in its lean, spicy tone. In its four years under Lockhart, it retains its admirable tendency toward clarity. But Berlioz’s symphony never quite fully came to life.

As for Korngold’s Violin Concerto, a sumptuous antique written for Jascha Heifetz in 1947, it could have used a more beguiling soloist. Pip Clarke delivered it with dispatch. The British violinist is a declarative, emphatic player, more interested in arriving at the high point of a phrase than getting there. In fast passages, she can become mechanical.

In the lyrical ones (where you get a juicy love theme from “Anthony Adverse” and other Korngold-scored films), she lays on a slick, thick vibrato as if that is what a movie cliche calls for. Heifetz proved just the opposite with this concerto. But, then, Heifetz never played to empty houses, and maybe Clarke was just overcompensating.

Utah Symphony, with Keith Lockhart, Thursday, 8 p.m., Pasadena Civic Auditorium, 300 E. Green St., Pasadena, $20-$55. (213) 365-3500. Also Friday, 8 p.m., Lobero Theatre, 33 E. Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara $32.50-$37.50 (805) 963-0761.