MUSIC REVIEW : Glendale Symphony in Lackluster Program

Visions of a conductor imposing his iron will upon an orchestra quickly vanished when Lalo Schifrin took the podium Sunday night to conduct his Glendale Symphony at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Nothing so deliberate or intentional as what could be called an interpretation appeared to take place all evening. It was more like a wrestling match with the music at hand.

The concert proved to be an uneven affair, to put it mildly. Schifrin presented an agenda of familiar classics in basically orderly run-throughs, which is to say that the music heard resembled that named in the program.

That program, dubbed “The Classics and the Silver Screen,” listed the Bach/Stokowski Toccata and Fugue in D minor (which is probably by Bach/Cailliet), Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Suite (1919) and Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto--not exactly the most prominent classics used in film.

Jeffrey Biegel was the stalwart soloist in the concerto, seemingly handcuffed by the stodgy accompaniment offered by Schifrin. The work became something like a giant medicine ball heaved back and forth between the protagonists, neither of whom could do much with it except heave it back.

Still, Biegel was the more energetic of the two; he executed cleanly, applied a soft-hued touch to the Adagio and sneaked a modicum of spirit into the finale.

The orchestra, made up from some of our best local free-lancers, produced some respectable sounds in the Bach and Stravinsky, but whenever the going got tough, the going got sloppy.