When a well-meaning critic dubbed Arnold Schoenberg’s pupil Alban Berg “the Puccini of 12-tone music,” he no doubt thought he was giving Berg a bit of free favorable publicity. Of course, in the Music Department of U.C. San Diego, even the most lax 12-tone disciple is prima facie a candidate for musical sainthood.

Soloist Pasha Tseitlin.

^{Courtesy photo}

So it was not surprising to find Berg’s Violin Concerto as the centerpiece of Saturday’s (May 1) La Jolla Symphony concert at UCSD’s Mandeville Auditorium. Symphony Music Director and university distinguished professor of music Steven Schick offered a probing and emotionally rich interpretation of the iconic Expressionist concerto, featuring the young violinist Pasha Tseitlin as soloist. For the avant gardists, Schick underscored the unsettling, dissonant provocations in the orchestra, while Tseitlin carressed Berg’s melodic invention with a Romantic ardor to please the closet Puccini admirers. For this listener it was an irresistible combination.

Apologists claim that the Berg Violin Concerto’s paucity of concert performance—I cannot recall hearing it at Copley Symphony Hall, for example—has to do with its lack of virtuoso display for the soloist. This is, at best, a half truth, because the composer supplied plenty of technical wizardry for the violin soloist, which Tseitin executed with calm authority.

But unlike a more traditonal concerto where the orchestra quietly noodles in the background while the soloist shows off, Berg provides complex and unpredictable orchestral counterpoint against the soloist’s animated flights. Schick and Tseitlin made of most of this creative tension, yet when the austere strains of the interpolated Bach chorale appeared in the last movement, all the musicians focused harmoniously on this otherworldly symbol. I can imagine a more polished version of this concerto from a fully professional orchestra, but I would be surprised to encounter an interpretation that so warmly encompassed the angst and wonder Berg has mysteriously mingled in his work.

As a complement to the Berg Concerto, Schick offered the premiere of Benjamin Sabey’s “In Paradisum,” the 2010 Thomas Nee Endowment commission. Shorter and less combative that Berg’s Violin Concerto, “In Paradisum” is a subtle tone poem that echoes many of Berg’s favored orchestral timbres: sustained, hushed dissonances in the strings, dense chords in the ample low brass and winds, and the quiet ascent of an astringent harp arpeggio. Chimes, piquant vibraphone chords, and pianissimo glissandi on the low strings seemed like apt symbols for Sabey’s picturesque title. While it was difficult to nail the form on a single hearing, “In Paradisum” provided a satisfying progression of refined textures and fertile ideas.

On paper, surrounding these two modernist works with popular Mozart symphonies was a deft stroke of programming, a Schick trademark. He opened with "Symphony No. 40 in G Minor" and closed with "Symphony No. 41 in Major," the Jupiter. A large orchestra, the La Jolla Symphony boasts over 60 strings, is not ideal for a transparent Mozartean sound, and Schick compounded this challenge by choosing unusually slow and deliberate tempos. Symphony No. 40’s opening Allegro molto, for example, barely approached the outer suburbs of allegro, and there was nothing molto about it. In place of the humor or passion that enlivens every square inch of a Mozart canvas, Schick substituted cerebral analysis and cautious exposition.

Although the orchestra’s technical capabilities have matured admirably under Schick’s direction, its circumspect discipline in these Mozart staples was not enough to make them either compelling or memorable.

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