This was a strongly rooted interpretation that turned structural corners with clean efficiency, driven by particularly crisp playing in the lower strings. Like many conductors today, Flynn uses Beethoven's own brisk tempo markings, but he does not follow cut-down original-performance practices. The strings were at full strength, and Flynn even doubled the horns — using four instead of Beethoven's prescribed two — to ensure the sound would carry through.

The resulting full-bodied zest made a powerful and exciting performance without a trace of pomposity. The eerie reprise of the scherzo was enough to cause even a blasé listener to wonder what would happen next, and the following crescendo melted into the finale magnificently, without the slightest break or catch in tempo. The long coda's stamping insistence on C major is the most potentially enervating part of the work, but the tempo and a clear sense of forward motion drove it onward briskly, eliminating any sense of redundancy.

Flynn made one truly eccentric and surprising interpretive choice in his Fifth, which he said nothing of in his pre-concert talk. He seems to believe that this symphony hides a concerto for oboe. In classical-period concertos, particularly for piano, it was often the custom — and for some performers still is — to write their own cadenzas, sometimes improvising them on the spot. In the recapitulation of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth, there's a tiny cadenza for solo oboe. It's one of the few solos in that movement, and it's the only spot where the forward motion halts momentarily. Flynn had asked principal oboist Pamela Hakl to write her own cadenza to replace Beethoven's. I do not know how many listeners noticed this less-decorated substitute bar of music, but it certainly surprised me.

Impressive as the Beethoven was, the concert's really outstanding work was the Bernstein score for the 1954 film On the Waterfront. This had been Bernstein's only attempt at purpose-written film music (he also arranged two of his stage musicals, On the Town and West Side Story, for film use). Not being happy with the way the director cut up and subordinated the music, Bernstein arranged it for concert use. He called this piece a “symphonic suite,” but it functions as a single movement, a twenty-minute tone poem in the tradition of Liszt or Richard Strauss, serially integrating a variety of moods.

On the Waterfront is a tough, brutal story of union formation among New York longshoremen, with a love interest between Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint tucked in. Bernstein's suite roughly follows the film's storyline, depicting the scenes emotionally rather than describing the plot in detail, although there is one obvious moment near the beginning where an informer is tossed off a rooftop. Musically, the suite is the missing link between Aaron Copland — there are echoes of Billy the Kid, especially in the quieter transitional moments — and Bernstein's own West Side Story. There's “rumble” music that's a clear precursor of the later work, and the love theme nearly breaks into “Maria.”

It took decades for European musicians to figure out how to play Copland with the proper American rhythmic verve, so Patrick Flynn, a cool if witty Englishman, might not have appeared to be the ideal conductor for a work of this kind. But he and the orchestra handled it excellently. A quiet theme for horn, well played by substitute principal Meredith Brown, ties the work together. There's some jazz influence here and there, notably in a few saxophone solos, but this performance emphasized brilliantly executed rhythmic exactitude in the fast sections and a warm but not overblown passion in the love music. The scenes tumbled by, all performed with smooth command.

The concert began, after the obligatory National Anthem, with some selections from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. One is shocked to realize that when Mendelssohn wrote the overture in 1826, not only was he only 17, but Beethoven was still alive. It's even more surprising that, when the composer returned 16 years later to compose incidental music for a performance of the play, he was able in his thirties to recapture his earlier youthful spirit. At this concert we heard the Overture and two of the incidental pieces, the Nocturne and Scherzo.

The Overture doesn't attempt to tell the play's story; it depicts the characters. Lightness and gossamer are the usual approach to this music, but this performance was different: slowed down slightly, with a harsh and rough sound that displayed the inner voices of the score and brought out the rude and comic side to Shakespeare's play that's hidden in Mendelssohn's music but can be exposed by determined performers.

The orchestra was notably smoother in the Scherzo, the last-played of the pieces, and some of the roughness expressed itself in occasional falling-apart of the string filigree in the Overture and a few horn flubs in the Nocturne, so possibly part of this harsh sound may have been simply the performers warming up and learning to play together again after a summer off.

While not perfect, the Bernstein in particular showed again that Symphony Silicon Valley is an orchestra of both technical and interpretive mastery.