Firm, taut work from a ‘genius’

If you haven’t been hiding under a rock, you already know that 2005 has been Marin Alsop’s year. As the newly appointed music director-designate of the Baltmore Symphony, the recipient of a coveted MacArthur “genius” grant, featured as Person of the Week on ABC’s “World News Tonight,” no other conductor has received as much ink and camera time this year.

There has been controversy too, mainly because the Baltimore appointment was made over the objections of most of the musicians.

And that brouhaha had nothing to do with gender -- it was Alsop’s musicianship that was challenged; a devastating letter from a dissenting Baltimore Symphony board member that surfaced in a Washington Post column laid out the case specifically.

Yet if there are any defects in Alsop’s musical makeup, they are not evident in her mostly first-rate recordings of American music on the Naxos label -- nor in her bang-up performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” at the Hollywood Bowl in 2004.

On Saturday night, as guest with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Alsop showed what she could do with a basic repertoire piece, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 -- and it came off in undeniably capable fashion.

Working without a score, running the second, third and fourth movements together with barely a pause, Alsop gave Tchaikovsky a firm, taut ride. She observed his detailed tempo changes in the second movement to the letter, resisting sentiment, letting the finale barrel along on its way, working vigorously and occasionally levitating above the podium in a throwback to her mentor, Bernstein. There weren’t any striking original insights; just good playing and solid conducting, which was enough to trigger Tchaikovsky’s built-in standing ovation.

Alsop also laid down a rhythmically alert accompaniment for guitarist Eliot Fisk in Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,” whose famous brooding second movement has been taken to other places by jazzmen like Miles Davis, Gil Evans and Jim Hall. Indeed, the second movement inspired Fisk’s most imaginative playing, dominated by an improvisatory flamenco feeling, while the sprightly outer neo-classical movements sounded a bit parched in tone, in need of more resonance.

The sole rarity of the night was one of Toru Takemitsu’s last pieces, “Spirit Garden,” another slow-release splash of impressionistic colors from the late Japanese composer laced with a repeated, rising four-note motif. Yet Alsop’s conception seemed somewhat tense, not as meditative as one would expect in Takemitsu’s idiom.