CLARK’S PACIFIC SYMPHONY GIVES MAHLER HIS DUE

The current obsession with restraint and objectivity in the interpretation of Mahler is a result of critical reaction to a generation of herculean exaggerators. When taken seriously, it produces a kind of anti-Mahler attitude.

As Keith Clark demonstrated Saturday evening, there is a middle ground. If there was scant display of conductorial ego in his leadership of the First Symphony, there was also no effort to inhibit the self-indulgence, the morbidity and, yes, the heroism, of the composer’s ego. Mahler knew what he was doing and needs neither a leash nor a goad.

Clark’s Pacific Symphony would like to be known as something more than just a regional band. Saturday, it played up to its loftiest pretensions. The sound had a well-balanced power and intensity across the dynamic spectrum, and a wonderful immediacy in Santa Ana High School Auditorium. Clark accepted the score as Mahler left it after revisions, and his players made it sound utterly convincing at every level.

Cellist Janos Starker dedicated his performance of Haydn’s D major Concerto to the memory of two recently deceased friends. As such, it was a remarkably hurried account. Clean tone and lyric elegance were much in evidence. But so was a tendency to push the tempos, although few notes eluded his sure fingers and flying bow.

Clark held a more measured view of the work and seldom responded to Starker’s nudging. Otherwise, Clark led an appropriately scaled-down orchestra in a stylistically faceless, prettily played accompaniment.

The concert began with Krenek’s complex, neurotically skittish “Fivefold Enfoldment.” Some poor intonation and missed communication aside, it seemed a forceful reading of this taut, serial composition. The audience gave the composer more respect in applause than in careful listening.