MUSIC REVIEWS : MESTER CONDUCTS

Any unfamiliar music involves a risk with the average audience, but the chances are reduced to a minimum when the composers are Haydn and Shostakovich. Neither Haydn’s Symphony No. 93 in D nor Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor is standard fare, but Jorge Mester and the Pasadena Symphony emphatically triumphed with them as the sole items of the program in Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday night.

The Haydn work, one of the first set of symphonies composed for London in 1792, was elegant and refined without overemphasizing either of those qualities. Mester has a knack for getting at the heart of a score; he sculpts each individual phrase while maintaining its place in the scheme as a whole. Alert rhythmical impulse and minute but never-too-finicky finesse of tone contributed equally to a refreshing performance.

Time has not yet resolved which of the 15 Shostakovich symphonies are the most important or the best, a difficult decision because they share so much in common. But the status of the Tenth Symphony was notably elevated by Mester’s spectacular performance. It was the work of a top-notch conductor leading a first-class orchestra.

Shostakovich had a talent like that of Mahler for taking essentially commonplace material and constructing towering structures from it. The Tenth lasts nearly an hour, and it incorporates all the familiar Shostakovich devices, but so varied and ingenious is the orchestral dress that the ideas assume a forcefulness not intrinsic to the work.

Mester conducted the Tenth with an inspired sense of musical theater. He reveled in the most selective delicacy of color, and he unleashed earthshaking blasts of stirring drama. The orchestra played even beyond its natural bent, and it was little wonder that the audience stood and cheered.