WEEKEND REVIEWS : Music : Kawakubo, Glendale Symphony

It takes time for a conductor to develop a rapport with an orchestra. If the Glendale Symphony’s concert Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is fair evidence, then Lalo Schifrin, now two years into his music directorship, needs more of it.

In an old-fashioned program more typical of 1890s London than 1990s Los Angeles, Schifrin led his orchestra in undistinguished, often messy run-throughs.

So it remained for 11-year-old violinist Tamaki Kawakubo to steal the spotlight. In her performance of Edouard Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole,” she exhibited enthusiasm and an almost nonchalant technique. Kawakubo is no automaton. Though her musical expression is still imitative, the gusto of her delivery imparts a style that is refreshingly unprecocious.

Schifrin closed with a ‘Wagner Spectacular” that included a contrapuntally quagmired “Die Meistersinger” Prelude, a disheveled “Tannhauser” Overture and a fast, ill-balanced Ride of the Valkyries, played twice. He opened with what is thankfully a rarity these days, the “Bacchanale” from Saint-Saens’ “Samson et Delila.”