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West Coast Symphony delivers sizzle

The Florida West Coast Symphony performs at 8 p.m. today and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. $30-$69 Saturday; $27-$48 Sunday. 941 953-3434; www.fwcs.org

By ALBERT H. COHEN
Published March 12, 2005

SARASOTA - On the way into Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall on Thursday to hear the Florida West Coast Symphony concert, I asked one of the musicians if I was going to enjoy the Copland Third Symphony, the evening's featured work. He smiled and said yes. When asked why, he answered with one word: "Energy."

One didn't have to wait long to experience that vigor. Music director Leif Bjaland led his orchestra into the overture to The Bartered Bride by Smetana with a combination of refined, detailed playing and a sizzling pace that made this jewel an experience to savor long after its seven minutes were over.

The audience of 1,700 gave the overture a long and well-earned ovation. It is not an easy piece for an orchestra, with its fleet string passages and contrapuntal textures. Yet everything was precise.

The Grieg Piano Concerto featured Brian Ganz. A medal winner in two major competitions around 1990, Ganz has never enjoyed the recognition his virtuosity deserves. As happens with many fine pianists, whatever spark is missing to generate a true star career led Ganz to academia, along with a modest solo calling.

His approach to this old chestnut was well-shaped in the first two movements. There was power when needed, subtlety elsewhere. The cadenza was the virtuoso trip it's designed to be, and the adagio was nicely shaped and dynamically varied. Where Ganz missed the mark was in the finale, when his choice of a too-quick tempo led to slurring of runs and a feeling that the music was rushed.

Bjaland supported the soloist cleanly, although keeping up in the last movement was challenging. Overall, it was an entertaining version of an audience favorite.

Most of us know and love the music of Aaron Copland through his great ballet suites such as Rodeo and Appalachian Spring. Yet he spent a lot of energy in the symphonic genre, composing five works (two of them unnumbered).

The Third Symphony is his last and most substantial. It was written in 1946 under commission from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation. In my thinking, the influence of Serge Koussevitzky is at the root of the strengths and weaknesses of the work. That famed conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra - and great proponent of 20th century music - liked his pieces big and bold. To appeal to that taste, Copland extended and expanded the form of this work to 43 minutes and four movements. The problem is, he didn't have enough material for that length.

The result is a work with moments of great beauty contrasted with those of bombastic, repetitive mediocrity.

Bjaland succeeded in making sure we heard everything in the score, good and bad alike. No matter how dense a passage, he extracted all the detail in perfect balance. The large orchestra played cleanly and precisely, following its conductor exactly. In so doing, the players achieved a level of artistry that places them among the best of this nation's regional orchestras.

Albert H. Cohen can be reached at AHC@Bloomberg.net

[Last modified March 12, 2005, 00:48:09]