The right music, right atmosphere

LISE DE LA SALLE, KEITH LOCKHART, UTAH SYMPHONY, Deer Valley Amphitheatre, Deer Valley, Friday

DEER VALLEY — Deciding which pieces to put on a particular program is sometimes an underrated art. Last Friday night's Utah Symphony performance at Deer Valley beautifully illustrates what can happen when you pair the right music with the right atmosphere.

What was so interesting, though, is that this very factor made it so that the two Respighi pieces — "The Fountains of Rome" and "The Pines of Rome" — ended up being the highlights of the concert instead of featured guest artist Lise de la Salle.

And the fault wasn't with la Salle at all. It was mostly just that the music and the environment with the Respighi pieces were so perfectly matched that something magic happened. On the other hand, it is difficult for a solo pianist — any solo pianist — to effectively communicate person-to-person when one is amplified over a loudspeaker and competing with a mountainside, picnics, birds flying overhead, the sunset ... you get the picture.

Still, la Salle did a commendable job on the Liszt. An up-and-coming young talent, la Salle plays beautifully and with natural grace, not needing to rely on unnatural, affected gestures to force emotion into the music. And since the Liszt piano concerto is a flashy, showy piece, it still was able to respectably hold its own in an outdoor venue.

The advantage the Respighi pieces had is that rather than competing with the natural environment, they blended with it, turning it to their advantage. In fact, conductor Keith Lockhart worked it so literally that at one point he used the physical mountainside as part of the piece by sending a trumpet player up for a solo to create a distant, ethereal, "surround-sound" effect. (Although the chosen spot was right next to one part of the audience, which probably didn't find it very distant or ethereal.)

About the only drawback to all this was at the end of the "Pines of Janiculum," when the score calls for a recording of a nightingale. In a concert hall, it perks the ear and evokes nature. But in nature — where it's competing with real birds in a natural environment — it sounded canned and almost cheesy. Not the symphony's fault, of course.

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E-mail: rcline@desnews.com