Carlo Ponti Jr. Guest-Conducts for American Youth Symphony

Working with a guest conductor for a whole program is practical training that members of the American Youth Symphony had little of under indefatigable founder Mehli Mehta. Four programs into Alexander Treger’s inaugural year as music director, however, and AYS had just such an experience--and a generally satisfying one it seemed to be--Sunday evening at Royce Hall under Carlo Ponti Jr.

Not that Ponti could be much of a stranger to many of the young players. A recent postgraduate alum of USC in piano and of UCLA in conducting, Ponti is a protege of Mehta studying in Vienna. (He is also the son of Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti.) As does Mehta, he worked confidently from memory. He favored expansive rhetoric and legato playing that proved quite effective in Wagner and Brahms and rather anachronistic in Mozart.

The Brahms at hand was the sunny Second Symphony. Ponti appeared to have something warmly Viennese in mind, and the score could hardly let that fail, given such a capably responsive and enthusiastic orchestra. But in transitional areas, he could let energy evaporate and everyone tread musical water until the next big tuneful swell came along.

He also got some inarticulate and unprepared entrances from the full wind choirs at exposed moments, despite his clear beat. As individuals, though, the wind principals gave him passages of real glory, and the strings have seldom sounded richer.

Ponti’s soloists were concertmaster Elizabeth Pitcairn and principal violist Richard O’Neill in Mozart’s evergreen Sinfonia Concertante. They played with sweet, well-matched radiance, generous with vibrato and sentiment. It sounded a bit old-fashioned but affecting on its own unstylish terms and technically immaculate.

Ponti led a plush, mostly tidy accompaniment, also from memory. To open, he produced a propulsive Prelude to “Die Meistersinger,” somewhat inflexible in tempo but extroverted in spirit and grandly played.