MUSIC REVIEW : Alumnus Took Orchestra Through Its Paces

San Diego Symphony alumnus Daniel Lewis took the podium at Symphony Hall on Thursday evening, where he was eagerly received by the local musicians. Since Lewis left San Diego--he was associate conductor under Robert Shaw here in the late 1950s--he has become Southern California’s master teacher of conducting, both in the classroom at USC and as a frequent guest conductor.

Lewis brought with him Ned Rorem’s 1965 tone poem, “Lions,” a clever, accessible contemporary work that features a four-piece jazz combo juxtaposed against full orchestra. Although “Lions” is one of the more avant-garde pieces in the orchestra’s current, purposely conservative season, Lewis played it with all the straightforward conviction of a Brahms symphony. His strategy worked--no one stomped out, and the applause was more than perfunctory.

While the structural idea for Rorem’s composition is hardly unique--Alban Berg devised a similar jazz band juxtaposition in the second act of his opera “Lulu”--the composer’s structural craft and lyric gifts made “Lions” sing. Shifting planes of abstract orchestral sound bounced off a seductive blues theme from the alto saxophone, deftly played by guest soloist Paul Sundfor. The orchestra responded with warmth and clarity to Lewis’ finely wrought direction.

The real star of the evening, however, was violinist Robert McDuffie, who made Max Bruch’s sow’s ear of a violin concerto (the G Minor, Op. 26) into a stylish silk purse.

With idiomatic flare and unfailingly secure technique, the young American musician tossed off Bruch’s cascading double stops and savored his overripe Romantic melodies. McDuffie’s sophisticated approach and his rich, yet clearly focused, tone made this listener wish that he had tackled one of the more substantial examples of the violin repertory.

Beethoven’s Third Symphony (“Eroica”) was an exam the recently reconstituted orchestra was not ready to take. A work of grand gesture, yet constantly exposed details, Lewis could elicit neither the tight unisons nor the cohesive ensemble the “Eroica” demands. At this stage, the orchestra’s fortes still blared out of control and the violins turned brittle. In the expansive opening movement, even Lewis appeared to loose a clear sense of direction.

Fortunately, a fleet and buoyant rendering of the scherzo gave a ray of hope for the orchestra’s future improvement. Lewis and his crew focused the energy of the finale, in which the horns happily redeemed their earlier wayward playing. The symphony’s resounding final cadences sounded more as relief than triumph, but a new season has only begun.