Pacific puts focus on drums

When Pacific Symphony Music Director Carl St.Clair admitted to the audience at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on Wednesday evening that he had never conducted a snare drum concerto before, he signaled that percussion may still be the most underutilized of all the instruments of the orchestra, its potential not yet fully exploited.

But some of that potential has been brilliantly realized and was on display in “Bolero,” the opening concert of the Pacific Symphony’s SpringFest 2007, “Pulse!” Although not everything on the program was on a consistently high level, the concert was a laudable achievement, with percussion for once deservedly basking in the spotlight.

The orchestra’s principal percussionist, Robert Slack, was the evening’s snare drummer par excellence. He anchored the ballet score that gave the concert its name and its finale, Ravel’s 1928 “Bolero,” with an impressive blend of rock-solid steadiness and mounting excitement. This was met by the rest of the orchestra with solos exemplary (such as the woodwinds’) and not-so (a wobbly trombone). St.Clair, who failed to acknowledge Slack at the end, took a faster tempo than Ravel indicates, clocking in at a too-brisk 15 minutes.

For an opener, the program also featured Slack in Icelander Askell Masson’s “Concert Piece for Snare Drum and Orchestra,” a busy, concerto-like work from 1982 offering ample opportunities in its 10 minutes for the soloist to demonstrate virtuosity.

Curiously facing stage left in piano recital fashion, Slack executed dynamics and tempo changes with precision and intensity. His two technically outstanding cadenzas were the highlights of this performance.

The Toronto-based percussion quintet Nexus came next with Toru Takemitsu’s “From me flows what you call Time,” a 1990 work written for the 1991 centennial of Carnegie Hall that Nexus, St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony recorded in 1996, only months after the composer died.

On Wednesday, the 36-year-old ensemble was at the top of its game. Bill Cahn, Bob Becker, Robin Engelman, Russell Hartenberger and Garry Kvistad -- who started playing while in a procession down the aisles -- effortlessly performed (and from memory) on an immense battery of Euro-American, Afro-Caribbean and Asian bells, gongs, temple bowls, drums, chimes, rattles, boo-bams (tuned logs), marimbas and more.

The uniqueness of most of these instruments’ tonal qualities made up for the 33-minute work’s occasional stupefying stretches of pauses, although the final fade-out of wind chimes, with all the musicians motionless, created some suspense.

A featured ensemble at next week’s Ojai Festival, Nexus also played two pieces by itself. Steve Reich’s eight-minute Minimalist “Music for Pieces of Wood” (1973) -- five pairs of different-pitched claves -- exuded mesmerizing liveliness amid its superb exactness. “Tongues,” the group’s own five-minute arrangement of a traditional Zimbabwean folk tune, was led by the mbira, a plucked, metal-tongued “thumb piano,” adding greatly to the already massive arsenal of world percussion heard in this concert.

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Pacific Symphony

Where: Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 8 tonight

Price: $22 to $150

Contact: (714) 755-5799 or www.pacificsymphony.org