BRUSILOW LEADS GLENDALE SYMPHONY : VIOLINIST FRIEDMAN PLAYS MENDELSSOHN

Glendale Symphony concerts aren’t like ordinary garden-variety concerts.

For starters, there is no separation here of art and state. Glendale places a flag at the proscenium arch of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (which, of course, isn’t even in Glendale). The pugnacious and unsingable sentiments of the National Anthem serve as an invariable prelude.

The program magazine identifies financial contributors. It does not identify the excellent players in the orchestra (the concertmaster gets his bow but remains anonymous). The annotations say little or nothing about the music. The repertory pendulum swings from serious challenges to pap and pop. The audience, dominated by senior citizens, is generally subdued.

On a good night, however, the Glendale Symphony makes good music. Saturday night turned out to be a good night.

The centerpiece on the agenda was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto played by Erick Friedman. The concerto hadn’t been heard here since Wednesday, when Isaac Stern assayed it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Friedman hadn’t been heard here since 1972, when he played a recital in Van Nuys.

The local neglect of this former student of Heifetz and Milstein is difficult to explain. Friedman, now 46, is a virtuoso in his prime, a thoughtful artist whose taste and refinement place flamboyance in its proper perspective.

Despite a somewhat nervous start and an apparent sag in energy during the final passages, he offered a patrician performance--a performance ennobled by broad and generous phrasing, impeccable intonation, insinuating rubato and subtle shading. It was, in fact, a far more satisfying, more honest, more compelling performance than the more expensive, wildly applauded one offered by Stern three days earlier.

Among other problems, Stern had suffered the disadvantage of Paavo Berglund’s rigid accompaniment. In Anshel Brusilow, Friedman found a really sympathetic collaborator, one who used to be a distinguished violinist himself.

On this occasion, Brusilow did not subdue the lustier instincts of an orchestra seemingly unaccustomed to the joys of delicacy. Nevertheless, he breathed with his soloist, sighed with his soloist, paused with his soloist, knew exactly when to lead and when to follow.

The conductor opened the program with William Schuman’s “American Festival Overture,” a nifty fusion of the raucous and the academic, anno 1939. It proved a relatively avant-gardish venture for Glendale. After intermission, he led the orchestra through an expansive, remarkably mellow yet reasonably heroic performance of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2.