SYMPHONY REVIEW

Monday, Nov. 20, 2006 | 7:34 a.m.

You get the feeling that the Las Vegas Philharmonic is enjoying auditioning for its boss's replacement.

The orchestra sounded crisp and powerful with guest conductor David Itkin at the controls Saturday night at UNLV's Artemus Ham Hall.

Audience members remarked how good the young symphony sounds after they had heard the second candidate to replace music director Hal Weller, who is retiring after this season.

Itkin, conductor of the Arkansas and Abilene, Texas, symphonies, animated the podium. He swayed joyously with the music, leaned back to coax the cellos and threw his slight frame forward to cue the winds. But his baton and left hand remained steady.

He also talked with the audience. He explained how Serge Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony made the composer a star in the Soviet Union because officials mistakenly heard their power and majesty in his music. But Prokofiev was writing about the spirit of his people, Itkin said, finally loosed with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

He tied it back to the music, pointing to the train rhythm of the symphony's fourth movement.

"They would be liberated by ideas like liberty and justice and that was his unstoppable locomotive," he said.

But the animation and conversation would be worthless if Itkin couldn't make the orchestra deliver.

He let Prokofiev's melodies flow in the slower sections and guided the orchestra as it nimbly passed around melodies and chugged along behind the clarinetist in the faster movements.

After Itkin's explanation of how Hector Berlioz was exploring the intersection of music and theater in "Beatrice and Benedict," he directed that the orchestra hit every mark of the overture's scripted counterpoint.

But the conductor remained mum before Samuel Barber's Cello Concerto.

He let a twitch in the strings and chatter in the woodwinds launch the orchestra into its call and response with guest soloist Matt Haimovitz.

It's a demanding piece, mixing angular urban phrases with poetic passages. It sounds at times as if George Gershwin were searching for Aaron Copland but stopped instead to chat with Thelonious Monk.

Haimovitz soared up and down the fingerboard. He echoed the lyric lines of oboist Stephen Caplan in the evening's most beautiful moments.

The juxtaposition of Barber and Prokofiev was a programming jewel, allowing listeners to compare American and Russian dreams in compositions written near the end of World War II.

Was Itkin better than David Commanday, who guided the Las Vegas Phil last month? That's a tough call. The Peoria Symphony conductor and guest violinist Lara St. John delighted the crowd in the season-opening concert.

It'll probably get even tougher when the final candidate, Peter Rubardt, conductor of the Pensacola (Fla.) Symphony, visits in February. He too has an excellent guest soloist - pianist Stewart Goodyear - and a crowd-pleasing program Mozart, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.

Listeners can only sit back and enjoy the process.