MUSIC REVIEW : Irvine Symphony in Refreshing Performance at Center

COSTA MESA —  Though its origins can be traced to 1978, a year before the Pacific Symphony was founded, the Irvine Symphony has tended to appear and then disappear, scheduling and later canceling concerts regularly over recent years.

Publicity material once described the group as the “oldest fully professional orchestra in Orange County.” Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, that description was modified discreetly in the program booklet to read simply “the oldest orchestra” in Orange County, reflecting, perhaps, that some of the players on the Segerstrom Hall stage looked as if they still might be students.

Even so, no one could dispute the professional, if sometimes ragged, quality of the music-making produced under the direction of Roger Hickman. The roughly 50 members--no roster was provided--played with vigor and commitment. If they tended toward primary colors, at least those were the appropriate ones. Perhaps this infrequent opportunity to play in public, even in a half-filled Center, urged them to give their wholehearted all. It was refreshing.

Hickman turned out to be a no-nonsense conductor, leading with clear, simple, unaffected gestures. He knew the right styles and how to turn up the rhetoric for maximum effect. If he often seemed buried in the score of Barber’s 1962 Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto, which closed the concert, well, it presents a conductor with real challenges.

The soloist, Soviet emigre pianist Leonid Kuzmin, seemed characteristically unfazed by the difficulties. Kuzmin, who turned 27 on Tuesday, is a familiar figure locally. He made his county recital debut in 1988 in a Philharmonic Society program, played with the Pacific Symphony in a summer concert in 1989 and offered a recital last November, sponsored by the Irvine Symphony.

Friday he proved a dazzling soloist, launching into Barber’s fierce chords and frenzied octaves with impetuous boldness and insouciant security. If he missed some of the jazz flavoring that John Browning, who gave the premiere, found in the score, Kuzmin compensated with fluency, power and bracing lyricism.

Earlier, Haroutune Bedelian had proved an erratic soloist in Brahms’ Violin Concerto, demonstrating individual temperament and gutsy attack but also suffering recurring pitch problems and other technical inconsistencies, and indulging in wayward phrasing.

Hickman followed gamely, but soloist and orchestra often seemed on different tracks.