ORANGE COUNTY MUSIC REVIEWS : South Coast Symphony Ends Season

The South Coast Symphony’s abridged season came to a close Saturday night at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. And it ended on a rather strange note.

It ended, to be precise, on a slightly sharp B natural. Emanating from an unknown source, the steady whistling sound was audible throughout most of the orchestra’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Only when the dynamics reached a mezzo forte or louder could one forget it. Otherwise it was distracting, unsettling, annoying, nerve racking.

After the first movement, conductor John Larry Granger made an apologetic appeal to the bemused staff of the Robert Moore Theatre. After 5 minutes and no success, he capitulated and continued the performance.

If one could tune out the obtrusion, one could hear an alert and eager orchestra both rhythmically taut and admirably precise, and very much in tune. The strings blended exquisitely at times, and the woodwinds--the clarinets especially--played with extraordinary polish.

Granger made this a transparent Fifth Symphony; one had to admire his skill in bringing out the work’s myriad details.

These details, alas, failed to coalesce into a unified whole. Each moment seemed pleasant enough, but missing was any sense of dramatic continuity.

Also missing was any feeling of spontaneity. Moreover, the low brass too often played too loudly, producing a biting, edgy sound.

Before intermission, Anthony Plog delivered a dynamic account of Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto. Generating a clear, focused and penetrating sound, the trumpeter brought solid virtuosity to the technical passages and intelligent lyricism to the melodic ones.

Before the Haydn, Plog offered Purcell’s short Sonata in D for Trumpet and Strings, which proved an effective vehicle for the ringing nobility of his upper range.