San Francisco Classical Voice

Despite all the attitude and fireworks that infuse his music, Prokofiev was a man of sadness. Despite his triumphs, he is known to have obsessed on his failures (as he saw them) and resented the successes of others. Instead of empathizing with the complicated composer through this unusually unguarded work, St. John seemed more intent on playing with surface effects. Her ethereal opening sounded stealthy, ready to pounce. And pounce she did, displaying a vivacious technique that seemed at its best where the composer wrote more for effect than feeling. That, therefore, defined the success of the performance, whose enthusiastic audience might have risen to a standing ovation but for the work's quiet, haunted conclusion. St. John the prodigy is now a maturing young woman, but with miles to go on the road to artistry.

Accompanying St. John was the guest conductor, Spain-born veteran Theo Alcantara, who concentrated his attention on a stylish orchestral score that calls for not only exotic effects but, in the middle movement, scherzo-vivacissimo, plenty of sizzle for both solo and orchestra. Except for mid-course repairs required by the undone tuning peg, the performance came together handsomely. But the same could not be said for the beginning of Dvorák's Symphony in G, a work that has to lie familiarly under every orchestra's fingers and occupy every conductor's repertoire. Like Beethoven's Fifth, Dvorák's Eighth is played in this country almost to the point of overkill.

Under Alcantara's lead, however, the first allegro (following the chorale-like introduction) found the wind band and the strings marching to different drummers. A strange echo resulted that, fortunately, regained consensus. Yet it happened a second time before the performance found its legs. Finally, attention went to Alcantara's spirited conception of the piece, marked by sharp contrasts between slow and fast, with underscored accents and shapely phrasing. Though management has chosen to defer the process of selecting a music director, the initial stumbles in this warhorse, and matters of balance in other spots, should give cause for reconsideration. These kinds of problems don't usually go away until an installed music director begins to sort them out and fix them.

One thing was clear in the Dvorák: Alcantara had a generous and imaginative sense of the piece, as he previously did for the work that opened the program, Dominick Argento's Valentino Dances, the symphonic tango taken from the 1994 opera The Dream of Valentino. While the Pennsylvania-born Argento, now 75, doesn't display the same feel for the Argentine tango as Astor Piazzolla, once the rhythm is secured the composer goes on to weave a vivacious arrangement of orchestral colors, replete with generous solos and cameos, especially favoring accordion (Barry Koron) and saxophone (Bill Trimble). The score got excellent service from Alcantara. One criticism of Argento's work: the wind and brass double too much of the string writing, essentially blotting it out. Dvorák's Eighth offers an instructive lesson on that point.