‘Vienna’ Concert Takes Its Cues From Tanglewood

Say this for the California Philharmonic: The orchestra has one of the most gorgeous settings for evening concerts in the area.

The group plays within the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia, facing a sloping lawn that is divided by a reflecting pool, surrounded by large planted trees, and roamed by some often-vocal peacocks that fancy themselves guest soloists. This is as close to the beauty and ambience of Tanglewood as Southern California gets, and on Saturday night, the Philharmonic even imported some Tanglewood weather: hot and humid.

Indeed, the orchestra’s Festival on the Green has attracted an audience in the thousands in its third season; the lawn was packed with white plastic tables and picnic blankets loaded with catered and do-it-yourself dinners. And while one cannot pretend that the music making is of Tanglewood caliber, it can be rather satisfying in spots, enlivened by the offbeat personality of conductor Victor Vener.

“A Night in Old Vienna” is a staple of pops programming, but in this case, along with the de rigueur outpouring of Johann Strauss Jr., Vener devoted half of the program to a pair of Viennese transplants who normally don’t turn up in this format. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 was an uneven affair; the pacing was sluggish in the first movement, but Vener eventually was able to generate a decent rhythmic response.

While purists in general ought to be drawn and quartered, in this case they would have been within their rights to complain about the truncation of Brahms’ Double Concerto. While maintaining an empathetic give-and-take musical dialogue, cellist Waldemar de Almeida and violinist Hubert Pralitz were only allowed to play the first movement, which robbed us of Brahms’ greatest slow movement.

Yet the Strauss Jr. second half (with one inevitable interpolation by Strauss Sr., the “Radetzky March”) was pretty good, for Vener takes the music seriously, trying to replicate Viennese accelerandos and in the “Blue Danube Waltz,” imparting a hint of a Viennese lilt at last. Of course, he also knew how to have fun with it, pointing out the witty detail in “Perpetuum mobile” and cutting it off in traditional fashion.