Temple orchestra takes Lincoln Center, feels the excellence

NEW YORK - The Temple University Symphony Orchestra no doubt left Lincoln Center Wednesday knowing its mission was thoroughly accomplished, having performed the symphonic equivalent of high-impact aerobics - and in a way that only hormone-driven twentysomethings can.

Respighi's The Pines of Rome, with its 3-D, high-def orchestration and trios of trumpeters positioned in each side box, concluded the concert in a fashion that made you concerned for the construction site next door to Alice Tully Hall: Anything unanchored was at seismic risk.

In the orchestra's first New York concert since 1989, that was the point - to be heard above the dense musical traffic in the cultural capital of the nation. Alice Tully Hall was rented ($12,000), nearby alumni invited, and interested Philadelphians bused northward in a program long planned for optimum circumstances in New York. It was all peaks, no valleys - and no great risks.

The orchestra already had played the seldom-heard Launy Grondahl Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra with soloist Nitzan Haroz in October in Reading; Berlioz's Overture to Benvenuto Cellini was aired in February in Haverford; and Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and the aforementioned Respighi were the second half of the orchestra's Kimmel Center concert on Sunday.

For Robert Stroker, dean of the Boyer College of Music and Dance, the concert is the beginning "of our students performing on a regular basis in New York and throughout greater Philadelphia." Next year, the orchestra visits Carnegie Hall. The Temple Jazz Band has a Lincoln Center date set for May 1.

Some owl-eyed skeptics might warn that even the best student orchestras don't play with consistency. However, the concentration of energy represented by Wednesday's concert gives the students a healthy taste for how excellence feels firsthand.

Audiences may not hear depth of understanding from a student orchestra, but chestnuts such as the Debussy come out far less road-weary. Full-time orchestras often deliver part-this-part-that performances, depending on their recent succession of conductors; though conductor Luis Biava wasn't out to change anybody's view of the piece, he delivered long, clearly delineated arcs: As it progressed, harps became more demure and the strings telescoped outward from a dewy hush to a spacious sound aided by particularly robust middle-voice strings.

The Grondahl concerto isn't just a curiosity. I know him as a conductor of important Carl Nielsen recordings; his composing lacks a strong voice and the concerto's command of form is rudimentary. The second movement's disarming lyricism, though, showcased the velvety tone of Haroz, the Philadelphia Orchestra's principal trombonist. Beyond that, Haroz's upper range was full of engrossing tension, and his ways of getting from note to note - always a telltale issue with a slide-based instrument - were marvelously clean and endlessly varied.