Harmonica star saves the show

Mystic - The New Haven Symphony Orchestra surely has never had a curtain call quite like this. The soloist took his bows, thanked the audience, and gestured back toward the 20 string players. "Now give it up for the band," he urged. The audience howled, and the orchestra sat stone-faced.

The disconnect was a fitting end to one of the oddest concerts in memory: Saturday night's SoundMusic program of Elvis Presley and Alexander Glazunov, of juke joint blues and elegiac Samuel Barber, all mixed up in a musical stew - with curious whales listening.

The final concert at the Mystic Aquarium of the series' abbreviated second season was rescued in the second half by the wit and showmanship of harmonica wizard Robert Bonfiglio, who fronted the string orchestra for a sentimental acoustic medley of Stephen Foster standards and an amplified Elvis rock medley. He mixed in solo tributes to seminal bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson and Chicago great Junior Wells, moved easily between chromatic and blues harp, and wisely kept the concert moving with music short and sweet - and, at times, nicely nasty.

Prior to Bonfiglio's set, the concert suffered from the stresses that had been placed on the series and its music director, Martin Peicuch. The series that began last year as heir apparent to the beloved Summer Music orchestral concerts in Harkness Memorial State Park in Waterford ran short on funds, moving its venue to Mystic and compressing its season. The program played Friday and Saturday nights was something of a scramble, the blending of two programs that had an air of randomness.

And the performances were generally flat and at times sloppy, sure signs of under-rehearsal.

The concert in the open central plaza of the aquarium began with a favorite of Peicuch's, Josef Suk's Serenade for Strings, a nice fit for a summer evening that featured, as did many of the works, some lovely playing in the violin obbligatos by concertmaster Artemis Simerson. But as the four-movement work progressed, ragged ensemble began to set in.

Then Peicuch picked up his alto saxophone to perform as soloist in Glazunov's Concerto for Saxophone and String Orchestra. Bobbing in his conductor's tails as he played and led the orchestra, Peicuch had nice moments in the cadenzas, but the one-movement concerto was oddly shapeless, its cadences ambiguous and disjointed, until the coda brought it together. As the concerto emerged from the fugato section near the end, Peicuch fingered his sax with one hand while trying to lead the orchestra behind him with the other, struggling to keep the frenetic energy from flying off the rails.

Peicuch opened the second half by apologizing for the performances. "Because we were tight budget-wise," the Stonington resident said, "we cut one rehearsal and turned it into a concert."

But the orchestra didn't appear to have signed on whole-heartedly to the program. For the performance of William Grant Still's Danzas de Panama, Peicuch had the orchestra stand up, a common practice for informal dance suites to animate the spirit in the musicians. But Saturday, the musicians stood like pillars. It was only in the oddest of program choices, Barber's serious and emotional Adagio for Strings, that the orchestra played with conviction and a strong sense of direction. When harmonica soloist Bonfiglio asked the orchestra to lay down a beat for a cutting contest between his harp and Peicuch's sax, few string players even watched, the very embodiment of boredom as they looked at the aquarium signage or the sky as they plucked.

But for the audience, Bonfiglio saved the day. Connecting with the small crowd, as intimate as many clubs, and honking Little Walter-style through his 1950 Valcro amp, he got the crowd hopping along with him, and everyone had a ball in the end.