California Philharmonic Serves Some Meaty Dishes at This Picnic

Something odd happened at the Festival on the Green at the L.A. County Arboretum Saturday night. Amid the lawn, the reflecting pool, the trees, the catered dinners, the relaxed socializing and a program titled “Hollywood Stars,” conductor Victor Vener injected some serious musical adventure.

Indeed, once the familiar flourishes of John Williams’ “Adventures on Earth” from “E.T.” and a “Hollywood Blockbuster Medley” of generic platitudes from James Horner were over and done with, the program bore little resemblance to your typical “film music” night. And the California Philharmonic--which one would not yet mistake for a world-class orchestra--was able to score an important one-up right under the noses of the dominant local world-class orchestra.

Although Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted John Corigliano’s score for “The Red Violin” in the film and on CD, he has yet to play the concert piece from which the score was derived, “The Red Violin: Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra,” with the L.A. Philharmonic. So Vener slipped into the void with a Southern California premiere, revealing a substantial, tough-minded concerto of nearly 17 minutes in length--with passages of spectacular orchestrations and plenty of muscular, angular cadenzas tackled by Elizabeth Pitcairn on her red Stradivarius (a coincidence, we’re told) with concentrated intensity.

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There was also a world premiere, Music for Percussion and Orchestra, from Cal Philharmonic composer-in-residence Roger Allen Ward that had nothing to do with film. A nine-minute mini-concerto for four percussionists and orchestra, the piece made its most impressive effect with the mysterious washes of metallic percussion in Part 1, while Part 2 (helpfully encored by Vener) seemed to get stuck in a static percussion battle with the brasses.

If anything, “Fantasia 2000” has given conductors an excuse to throw more genuine classical masterworks into the film-night repertoire. Vener chose two: a generally well-paced Berceuse and Finale from Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” and Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome,” which survived a near-mishap in Part 1 to generate some nice atmosphere in Part 3. The latter also gave Vener sweet revenge over his resident nemeses, the peacocks, since the score uses actual recordings of birds of another feather.