By Lyn Bronson
Pianist Anton Nel & Maestro John Larry Granger
Sometimes at an orchestral concert you can tell right away which works on the program received the most rehearsal time. So it was last night as the Santa Cruz Symphony under the direction of Maestro John Larry Granger, launched its 2009-2010 concert season. The major work, which ended the program, Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, showed off the Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestra at its best. In this work all the bold dramatic gestures and all the lovely melodies came together to produce a powerful and moving performance. The strings sounded rich and sonorous, the winds and brass were fine and the instrumental solos were lovely.
The opening work, Finlandia, Op. 26, by Sibelius, fared less well, for the orchestra sounded under-rehearsed. Ensemble was ragged and in general the level of orchestral playing was just not up to the standard we expect from the Santa Cruz Symphony. Similarly, the orchestral playing in the first movement of the Grieg Piano Concerto also sounded like a rough reading, rather than a finished performance. Right from the beginning we had a clue of what was to come. After the introductory timpani roll, the crack of the pianist’s opening A minor chord in the extreme treble was so covered up by the orchestra you couldn’t hear it at all. Throughout the first movement orchestral textures constantly got in the way of solo passages and distracted rather than enhanced the score.
