There were plenty of empty seats in Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Concert Hall on Friday. The Russian National Orchestra had canceled its American tour months ago, replaced that evening by the San Diego Symphony.
Orange County patrons who did attend were treated to a brilliant new trumpet concerto by Paquito D’Rivera and a thrilling of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, led by music director-conductor Rafael Payare.
It would have been far easier to hear this program Saturday in the San Diego Civic Theatre, but it was worth the 2½-hour drive north in order to hear the symphony in a world-class venue.
The orchestra sang in Segerstrom’s acoustics in a way that I haven’t heard in San Diego County halls. The upper strings were warm and lush, the cellos and basses firm and ive. Woodwind solos popped, and there was a new luster to the brass.
There’s a tendency in Copley Symphony Hall for the loudest ensemble ages to turn into mush. Different instrumental colors become difficult to pick out.
In Segerstrom, Payare could push the orchestra to play more loudly and still retain clarity. On the other end, the quietest sounds had a little extra resonance. Their entire dynamic range seemed to expand.
“Drip Blip Sparkle Spin Glint Glide Glow Float Flop Chop Pop Shatter Splash” by Andrew Norman opened the evening with manic energy. The lengthy title references 13 musical ideas that Norman calls “chopped-up sounds from the orchestra” with which he “tossed them all together and called it a piece.”
Extremely different musical textures were rapidly juxtaposed. This required precise ensemble work from Payare and the musicians. Several moments produced scattered laughter, such as woozy trombone glissandos or a dramatic Mahlerian hammer smash. It was an enjoyable four-minute musical rollercoaster.
Trumpeter Pacho Flores was the evening’s soloist. He played a Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major by the pre-Classical Czech composer Johann Neruda. Flores performed it on a modern corno da caccia, which looks like a tiny French horn but sounds like a mellow flugelhorn. His tone was amazingly clear, and his phrases were buoyed by imperceptible breathing. The slow movement took him to his highest with long lines played beautifully.
D’Rivera, best known as a Cuban bebop saxophonist and clarinetist, composed a “Concerto Venezolano” for Flores. Flores is a native Venezuelan (he and Payare were colleagues in El Sistema, Venezuela’s public music-education program), and D’Rivera incorporated Venezuelan dance forms in this work — a danzon, a merengue (the Venezuelan kind in five beats), and a joropo (a fast dance).
Flores possessed an unwavering solidity of tone and comfortably switched between popular and classical styles of playing. He was assisted by Hector Molina virtuosically strumming a cuatro (a Venezuelan four-stringed instrument like a large ukulele). Payare led the orchestra in an idiomatic performance for this concerto’s American premiere.
I don’t recall ever hearing so exciting a performance of a Tchaikovsky symphony in San Diego. Payare took advantage of Segerstrom Concert Hall’s acoustics to sculpt outrageous crescendos from near silence to as loud as possible, always with clarity. His tempos, as I have come to expect, were rapid, particularly in the third movement, but everything held together.
Plans were announced on Wednesday for the renovation of Copley Symphony Hall. Friday’s concert made it clear that this is an orchestra worthy of a better-sounding venue. Let’s hope the renovations do the trick.
Hertzog is a freelance writer.
