Festival ebbs with flow of program

ST. PETERSBURG -- Water, in all its musical forms, was the theme of the fifth annual Winter Sun Music Festival, which wound up Thursday night at the Palladium Theater. The festival orchestra played four works that demonstrated "the different ways composers look at water," in the words of artistic director and conductor Paul Hostetter.

There is quite a lot of water-inspired music, but towering above them all is La Mer, which Debussy put the finishing touches on in England in the summer of 1905 while spending a month in a resort town on the English Channel. Musicians are somewhat in awe of the work, which attains remarkable liquid effects through odd bits of rhythm and orchestral texture. Like no other piece of music, it really does sound like the sea.

Debussy's masterpiece concluded the program, and it was the evening's most satisfying work, no small achievement because of the impressionistic precision and clarity required in fitting together all its myriad parts -- from sparkling harp glissando to dappling little wind solos to surging brass. Hostetter did a good job of keeping the momentum taut in the undulating wavelike figures of the finale.

The festival orchestra, a mix of students, teachers and community orchestra members, had less than a week of rehearsal, and much of that time was probably devoted to the challenge of the Debussy. Some other selections suffered from ragged ensemble and lack of nuance.

With about 70 players in the orchestra, the instrumentation could be a bit spotty, especially in the strings. There were only a dozen or so violins, for example, though they made up for their scant number by playing well. The concertmaster was Joshua Ulrich, a onetime member of the Pinellas Youth Symphony now studying at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

Quibbles aside, the festival orchestra concert seemed educational in the best sense. It gave a group of musicians an opportunity to prepare a program that was interesting for them to learn and for the audience to hear.

Bernstein's symphonic suite from On the Waterfront, the 1954 movie with Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger and Eva Marie Saint, was a particular treat. The only film score Bernstein wrote, it is fascinating in its variety of jazz styles, suggestions of melodies that later showed up in West Side Story and even a quote from Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

French horn player Ariel Epstein had a busy night, with excellent solos in the Bernstein as well as in Siegfried's Rhine Journey from Wagner's Gotterdammerung. Rounding out the program was the rollicking Russian Sailor's Dance from Gliere's ballet The Red Poppy.

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