Although the era when droves of uniformed servicemen sauntered up and down Broadway in downtown San Diego every weekend is long past, San Diego is still a military town. Friday’s (Sept. 3) San Diego Symphony Summer Pops concert flaunted its military connections with a phalanx of brass players from the U.S. Navy Band Southwest and a battalion of howitzer-firing Marines, each group adding its own special firepower to the orchestra’s traditional season-closing rendition of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”

Resident Pops Conductor Matthew Garbutt could barely contain his enthusiasm for the presence of the Marines and the macho percussion potential of their big guns. He noted that the Marines had been absent from the last five Summer Pops seasons—perhaps the city’s current budget shortfall has eliminated noise-abatement inspectors on the weekend.

Chad Hoopes

^{Photo credit: Roger Mastroianni}

Indeed, with the added visual spectacle of obligatory fireworks, this ear-popping “1812 Overture” provided as exciting and uplifting a conclusion to the all-Tchaikovsky finale of the Summer Pops season as anyone could imagine.

But wait—this is not the whole story by a long shot. Earlier in the concert we were amazed by the talent of 15-year-old violin prodigy Chad Hoopes, making his local debut in the first movement of the Violin Concerto. And throughout the program, the orchestra itself displayed the panache and polish of troops readied for presidential inspection. I cannot recall a more musically satisfying Summer Pops final concert—and the orchestra has been playing these all-Tchaikovsky marathons as Summer Pops closers for decades, since they started these summer seasons on that barren, windswept point on Mission Bay in the early days of former Music Director David Atherton.

Hoopes lived up to and even exceeded Garbutt’s introductory hyperbole, although a teen-ager who has already performed with the Cleveland and San Francisco Symphonies is clearly a musician on the road to fame. He displayed not only the technique to surmount the formidable challenges of the Violin Concerto, but an equally clear understanding of how to give compelling, even opulent Romantic expression to every phrase. Each note of his cadenza—whether sustained or part of some shimmering fusillade of rapid figuration—received loving attention and emerged with complete clarity.

While I am reluctant to make solid conclusions about a performer’s tone quality when the sound is amplified through speakers (as opposed to hearing it naturally in a concert hall), it appears that Hoopes’ sonority is unusually full and bright, with an additional sweetness usually associated with players who display a more lithe sonority, e.g. Gil Shaham and Joshua Bell. Hoopes just might bring back to the concert hall that rich, Eastern European Romantic violin flavor, without the darker overtones of the Heifitz and Milstein generation.

After his Tchaikovsky triumph, Garbutt brought Hoopes back for an encore with the orchestra, Fritz Kreisler’s frothy “Caprice Viennoise.”

The remainder of Garbutt’s judiciously chosen program balanced the familiar Tchaikovsky, the ebullient “Polonaise” from his most popular opera Eugene Onegin, with equally engaging but decidedly less known Tchaikovsky offerings, the “Overture” to the rarely staged opera Mazeppa, three dances from the “Suite No. 2,” Op. 53, and another Suite of five movements from his ballet Sleeping Beauty. I suspect that the highly dramatic Mazeppa Overture would be more frequently played if it ended with a bang instead of a whimper.

In all of these works, the orchestra projected a bouyant string sound, lively and articulate woodwind counterpoint, and lyrical, burnished brass sonorities, especially from the trumpets, that never became stentorian. They rightly saved that effect for the “La Marseillaise” fanfares in the “1812 Overture.” In the “Scherzo-Burlesque” of the “Suite No. 2,” we were treated to some clever solo riffs by a pair of accordions, a rare use of this instrument in an orchestral context. When it comes to orchestration, I think Tchaikovsky’s genius is sadly underrated.

Garbutt’s direction was consistently spirited, but never rushed, and he encouraged the most graceful melodic contours from each section. In the inner, quieter movements of the Sleeping Beauty Suite, I appreciated his subtle dynamic inflections, even when the external noises of passing trains and departing planes at the airport threatened to distract our attention. He continued unruffled. As his military guests would say, he was on a mission, and nothing was going to get in his way.

This final concert of the Summer Pops was an occasion when a “mission accomplished” banner would have been completely congruent with the achievement of the orchestra and its intrepid Resident Pops Conductor.

PRESS HERE FOR PROGRAM

PRESS HERE FOR CONDUCTOR BIO

PRESS HERE FOR ORCHESTRA ROSTER