The Orchestra's final Mann week

The Philadelphia Orchestra's truncated season at the Mann may be showing the symptoms of financial malnutrition, but each of the last three concerts contained elements that demand comment. The most important was the Philadelphia Orchestra debut of the Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena.

Mena received an unpromising assignment— the annual "Tchaikovsky with Fireworks" program, complete with the mandatory summer performance of the 1812 Overture. He met the challenge with the kind of evening that makes you feel the conductor has pushed the Orchestra to a new level of achievement.

You could hear the upgrade in the first ultra-clear brass notes of Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien, and Mena followed that attention-getter with a series of crisp, precisely shaped violin lines. The strings produced a tone so warm and moving that it sounded like the whole section had been equipped with new instruments.

Something important

One of Tchaikovsky's great strengths was his gift for creating melodies that seem weighted with meaning. Mena made all of them count. He got the best out of every item on the program, including the 1812 Overture. The long passage for cellos and violas that opens the overture sounded like the prelude to something important, and the finale ended the program with a genuine "Hurrah for Our Side" exuberance.

Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture has always struck me as heavy-handed compared to the treatment Prokofiev gave Shakespeare's play in his wonderful ballet music. In Mena's hands, Tchaikovsky's R & J took on new life and became what it should be: the music for a story so familiar that we can respond to it merely by listening to the sound track.

If Mena conducts everything as well as he handles Tchaikovsky, he should be a leading contender for Philadelphia's biggest musical job opening. Check out his web entries (as I did after the concert) and you'll wonder why he made his Philadelphia debut during the off-season.

Juliette King comes through

The Mann series usually attracts the summer audience by scheduling famous soloists. The Orchestra skimped this year by concentrating on local talent, such as the Curtis students showcased in the three opening concerts. The last time the Tchaikovsky fête included the violin concerto, Midori occupied the solo slot. This year the Orchestra's associate concertmaster did the honors.

Juliette Kang doesn't produce the big tone the Mann requires, but she came through in all the areas that count. Her high notes sounded extra sweet, and the opening of the slow movement was just as touching as it should be. Mena gave her a soft, beautifully calculated accompaniment that let the violin stand out even when it was playing against the whole orchestra.

The Odd Couple

The final summer concert paired a rising piano idol, Lang Lang, with a veteran jazz pianist, Herbie Hancock. Most of the audience probably came to hear the stars, but I was attracted by the programming. This was the second program on the Mann calendar that featured concertos for two pianos— a rare event (you usually hear a double piano concerto only every three or four years).

The opening movement of Vaughan Williams's contribution to this genre is a raucous affair in which the pianos seem almost irrelevant. The slow movement, on the other hand, is one of the most heartbreaking interludes any composer has ever produced, and it creates its effects primarily with gentle piano parts accompanied by solos for the flute and other instruments.

Duets for one piano and four hands are usually fun to watch. When two pianists sit side by side on the same bench, the close proximity seems to encourage chummy interactions. In this case, the two chums tackling Ravel's Mother Goose Suite happened to be one of the more theatrical young classicists and a jazz virtuoso accustomed to informal byplay.

In addition to a good-natured interpersonal back-and-forth, the Odd Couple also turned in a satisfying performance of Ravel's delicate evocations of classic fairy tales. Lang Lang is developing into a musical poet— a surprising flowering to anyone who watched him wow audiences by throwing himself across the keyboard when he first started out.

Too much improvising

The evening ended with the two stars returning to their separate keyboards for a sure-fire finale: the two-piano version of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Before that, however, they engaged in some unscheduled improvising. They had a good time challenging each other in a two-piano set-to, and Hancock presented a lengthy ruminative solo improvisation on one of his own songs. There was nothing wrong with either item, but they both went on far too long— particularly for an audience that was waiting to hear the Gershwin. At one point, just before one of the improv interludes, Lang Lang asked the audience what he and Hancock should do, and a voice shouted, "Play Rhapsody in Blue."

A fixed, written score comes with a built-in advantage that we tend to take for granted: The script tells the performer when to stop.

Angela Brown's potential

At the Tuesday concert, the main attraction was the soprano Angela Brown, who moved from Curtis into the early phases of stardom when she sang Aida at the Met in 2004. Brown delivered a passionate performance of a key aria from Aida, but her second selection, an aria from Verdi's Don Carlo, offered a more significant indicator of her long-term potential. It's a more even-tempered piece, and she proved she can shape an aria so it will produce the maximum effect without resorting to the kind of histrionics Aida calls for.