To the American mind, making a connection between music theory and national security is too absurd to contemplate, although it could reasonably make for a snarky, satirical plot for television’s “South Park.” But for composers who lived behind the Iron Curtain during the rule of Joseph Stalin, deviating from the most conventional musical style could result in exile to a gulag with other traitors to the state.

The Soviet Union's official doctrine of Socialist Realism created a conceptual straightjacket for all of the arts, and it required composers to write in a simplistic, tonal fashion whose exemplar was folk music. After Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s, the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich kept his most complex music locked in his desk drawer until Stalin’s death, lest he risk the dictator’s wrath and exile.

San Diego Symphony guest conductor David Robertson brought a charming artifact from the Stalin era to his Friday (March 11) program at Copley Symphony Hall, György Ligeti’s “Concert Românesc.” Written in 1951, two years after the young Hungarian composer had graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, the breezy, completely tonal “Concert Românesc” exhibits none of the avant-garde edge of the music Ligeti wrote after he left Hungary following the failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Unlike the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and other leading lights of post-war European modernism, Ligeti’s later work attained wide public recognition because Stanley Kubrickincorporated so much of it in his films "2001: A Space Odyssey,"“The Shining," and "Eyes Wide Shut."In fact, Ligeti’s most acclaimed work “Atmosphères” is heard in its entirely in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The compact, four-movement “Concert Românesc,” which calls for a Haydn-sized orchestra and lasts but 15 minutes, quotes a number of Romanian folk tunes (hence the title) and spirited rustic dances. Everyone hears a different influence in the musical style: in his pre-concert lecture, Nuvi Mehta averred the influence of another noted Hungarian, Béla Bartók. Others claim the Romanian George Enescu, and I was reminded of the style of one of Ligeti’s Hungarian teachers, Zoltan Kodaly.

Ligeti’s orchestration proved deft from the start, and his use of an offstage echo horn, which sounded from the remote upper edge of Copley Hall’s balcony, provided a clever motif that unified the piece. On a few occasions the string writing grew unexpectly dense and dark—signs of the composer’s future endeavors—but fearing the censor’s keen eye, Ligeti quickly resolved such tensions with cheerful melodic excursions. Robertson’s enthusiasm for this rare gem was evident, and I was grateful to have heard it.

I note that under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, former Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic is currently presenting a two-week festival of Hungarian music that features several of Ligeti’s major works. The trendy New Yorkers, however, will have to wait until next weekend to hear the “Concert Românesc.”

When pianist Orli Shaham played a Beethoven Piano Concerto with the San Diego Symphony last season, I was swept away by her technical prowess and musicianship. Her account of the Edvard Grieg “Piano Concerto in A Minor,” however, proved highly disappointing. From the opening slavo, her fortissimo passages sounded coarse and clangorous, and she too frequently allowed her left hand to obscure the prominence of the right hand, whose themes that should have gleamed brilliantly. She was evidently working very hard, but the point of performance is to make such musical feats appear effortless.

In the quieter sections, Shaham exhibited meticulous control, but little poetry. To be sure, countless performers have overplayed Grieg’s Romantic effusions, but I thought her lack of rubato and nuance bordered on cold, even metronomic. It took Principal Flute Demarre McGill’s third-movement solo to remind us how supple a Grieg melody should sound.

A familiar proverb—“Be careful what you ask for!”—came to mind while listening to Robertson’s interpretation of Robert Schumann’s Third Symphony, called “The Rhenish.” Only last week I complained that Seymon Bychkov and the Vienna Philharmonic provided an anemic performance of Schumann’s Second Symphony at the Civic Theatre. Robertson’s ebullient “Rhenish” Symphony pulled out all the stops, and by the time he arrived at the fifth and final movement, I was ready to hoist the whilte flag of surrender.

Of course, Schumann’s Second and Third Symphonies are as different as night and day, and the grandeur Robertson brought to the first and fourth movements was indeed welcome. His conducting style is highly demonstrative, even busy, and he is in constant motion on the podium, a trait that brought out the vibrant edge of the orchestra, but at times compromised its metrical security. In the Scherzo, the animated themes traded by strings and winds exhibited laudable, precise articulation, which contrasted nicely with the deft lyricism Robertson coaxed from the same sections in the following movement.

This Schumann symphony makes great demands on the brass sections, and they acquitted themselves honorably. But I still hope for the day when the horns and trombones can unify their ensemble sounds into a rich blend that sounds like a true section. What will that require, I wonder?

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