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Radiant Sounds

SJ Symphony boosted Beethoven and Ticheli while stinting Bach

By Philip Collins

Last Saturday, guest conductor Carl St.Clair led the San Jose Symphony through a cheerful and vigorous--and at times dazzlingly executed--program. Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral), and Frank Ticheli's Radiant Voices (1993) were generously lyrical and of joyous persuasions, though J.S. Bach's Concerto in D Minor for Oboe, Violin and String Orchestra lent a plaintive presence.

The concerto was the only work associated with a minor key, and its gorgeous adagio movement anchored the surrounding works in a mood quite remote from lightheartedness. Ironically, the Bach was treated least seriously by St.Clair.

Beethoven's Sixth enjoyed tender handling and sure guidance. The orchestra worked together closely with the guest conductor to conjure the score's blissful imagery, achieving a performance that glowed with integrity. St.Clair was particularly sympathetic to the symphony's tenor; he couldn't have been more pastoral had he played the pan pipes and gone barefoot.

St.Clair took pains to elicit the details that count, imbuing the work's bucolic atmosphere with an attention to articulation and phrasing that was evinced in finely tailored cadences, flowing interchanges among the instrumental sections and agile plays of tempos.

The buoyant string sonorities that carry the opening movement billowed sonorously, and the work's darting woodwind interplays glowed with nuance. St.Clair strategically split his attentions between foreground activities and the work's mechanical upkeep and watched closely over the slippery string arpeggiation pattern as it moved between the sections, inspiring unanimity as much as possible.

The tempo relations were generally effective, although the gentle rounding of the fifth, and final, movement was indulged to an underwhelming degree. Climaxes of such quiescence are rare in the literature, but St.Clair's homogenizing treatment of the finale's contrasts weakened its subtle impetus.

Ticheli's Radiant Voices was a resounding success in several respects. It highlighted the composer's exemplary command of the orchestral medium, as well as the orchestra's finest virtuosities. Ticheli began composing Radiant Voices in 1992, several weeks after the Rodney King verdict. Aside from a few token police whistles and fleeting contemporary effects, however, the music is briskly straightforward and only mildly riotous--in a good-natured sort of way at that.

Ticheli, who serves on the faculty at the University of Southern California, is now in his fifth year as composer-in-residence for St.Clair's Pacific Symphony Orchestra. Radiant Voices is dedicated to St.Clair, and the conductor proved most worthy of the compliment; his guidance of the piece was lively, accomplished and articulate.

Ticheli's resourceful handling of orchestration and his sure sense of dramatic pacing lift Radiant Voices to thrilling heights, and the orchestra proved every bit up to task. Principal cellist Peter Gelfand excelled, and Michael Corner and Maria Tamburrino (principal clarinetist and flutist, respectively) also provided handsomely turned solos.

Radiant Voices is music of exquisite means and luxuriating impact. But it is also music of little risk, music that neither challenges convention nor carries it forward. That the echoes of Copland, Stravinsky and Bernstein were embedded throughout was not in itself a drawback, but the fact that the personality of the composer did not surface in the process left one wondering which voice was Ticheli's.

What could be heard of Pamela Hakl's oboe in the Bach was gracious and lyric. But the string complement of 24 players proved overshadowing more often than not. Thus her obliggatos were only nice to watch.

Concertmaster and violin soloist Byung-Woo Kim provided sterling craftsmanship, though his aloof manner only accentuated the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts' inappropriateness for such intimate music. The ebbing tradeoffs between oboe and violin during the adagio were dutifully exchanged, only suggestive of the score's dramatic power. It was baroque under glass.

St.Clair's direction of the Bach was puzzling in light of his dedicated and polished work on the Beethoven and Ticheli works. As if an ornament to the occasion, St.Clair opted just to beat time and smile. It didn't seem to matter that the cellos just walked their lines without a hint of contour, and the pizzicato accompaniments in the adagio resembled a dripping faucet.

With so much scholarship and virtuosity given to early music repertoire these days, it's surprising that misrepresentations of baroque works of this sort continue to crop up at symphonic programs.

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