Shaping Up in Saratoga

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Sometimes an orchestra and conductor form an interpretation so finely detailed it seems to pop off the stage with the full-dimensional complexities of sculpture.

And then there are performances like the Beethoven

Symphony No. 5

the Philadelphia Orchestra constructed Wednesday night to open its annual three-week residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. While hardly rough, it still came across as a work in progress.

This bit of news is actually a hopeful bellwether - the fact that right after vacation and with only an hour's worth of rehearsal the orchestra could achieve a Beethoven

5

that, if not terribly evolved, had a high level of polish, sweep and purpose.

The reasons had everything to do with Charles Dutoit, long in charge here, soon to be in charge full-time back home in Verizon Hall. Dutoit and the orchestra can at the very least glide along with the confidence that a certain baseline standard is being met.

If in their shared future they can consistently make the jump they made in the final three or four minutes of the Beethoven, we're in for an era of events, too. Dutoit's pacing - a carefully scaled stepping-up of intensity - accounted for some of the adrenaline. But what he was really doing was clearing the way for the orchestra to dig into the music, to move beyond mere ensemble-keeping matters and make music, which they did. The art of collaboration is back at the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The Saratoga summer promises more moments of pure-classical substance, along with some obsequious tactics. The orchestra's second night in Saratoga was all movie music, and large electronic screens hovering obtrusively in the amphitheater advertised other orchestra nights featuring a petting zoo with goats, a strolling magician, and free tango lessons.

What do audiences come for anyway? That's the core question SPAC leaders should be asking themselves these days, rather than hinting darkly, as president Marcia White is, that the orchestra's future in Saratoga hinges on audience turnout.

True, rows and rows of empty seats on opening night testified to work to be done. But the challenge would seem to lie more with White and her marketing team than with the product itself if sellouts are what they want. With 5,100 covered seats (plus a huge lawn), it's possible to have the hall only three-fifths full and still be playing for more listeners than could fit in Carnegie or Verizon Halls.

Strolling magicians might lure a few hundred more people on a given night. But are they listening to music? Is this really a sustainable strategy? Can someone really be brought into the hall by goats only to discover that he loves Strauss'

An Alpine Symphony

so much he has to come back to learn

Don Juan

and

Elektra

? I don't think it works that way.

Thursday night's movie music came with free ice cream, though the idea of this orchestra's playing John Williams and Elmer Bernstein was enough to get me there. Conductor Jeff Tyzik put together and led a program tilted toward the extroverted end of the film spectrum.

His arrangement of tunes from

The Wizard of Oz

was excessively sugary, but the Williams

Star Wars: Suite for Orchestra

was a dead-on ensemble fit. The orchestra takes to this music so comfortably because Williams takes so craftily from a vernacular they know well in the scores of Mahler, Strauss and Elgar. (The people behind me talked off and on through the concert, providing the authentic movie-house ambience.)

Dutoit's success Wednesday night similarly drew on ensemble strengths. He insists that the orchestra produce a certain refined sound no matter the volume, and in Zoltán Kodály's

Háry János Suite

he got it. Emanuel Ax, stepping in for André Watts, understands refinement, his tone limpid and ringing in Chopin's

Piano Concerto No. 2

. But if he produced a phrase of surprise, discovery or great originality I did not hear it.

Watts would have provided personality. But with pianists Martha Argerich and Yuja Wang visiting soon, supreme individuality in Saratoga is on the way.