MUSIC REVIEW : PACIFIC SYMPHONY SERVES MIXED CHAMBER PROGRAM

Keith Clark and members of his Orange County Pacific Symphony offered a chamber program Monday night at the South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa that had the look and taste of a pickles-and-strawberry-jam sandwich.

The bread consisted of two staples of the Baroque menu--one of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” (“Spring”) and one of Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concertos (No. 2).

The filling was a strange mix of three recent pieces of divergent quality: Steve Reich’s tasty “Eight Lines,” some excerpts from Lloyd Rodgers’ charming “Little Prince” ballet score and the premiere of “Epiphanies,” a commissioned work by local composer Mark McGurty.

The McGurty piece, which rambled in dead-serious fashion for 22 long minutes, was overstuffed with familiar new-music effects: menacing dissonances, slithering glissandi, piercing harmonics and the occasional echoed toots from flute and trombone, plus one novelty--a single outburst from a giant slide guitar called The Beam.

More easily digested were Reich’s “Eight Lines” and Rodgers’ ballet pieces--excerpts from a work given its premiere at Japan America Theatre in February.

The latter proved innocuous in their use of pleasant ostinatos and colorful scoring (including guitar, vibraphone and harpsichord), while the former displayed Reich’s masterful way of getting the maximum out of the minimum. In 20 minutes, hardly a note seemed superfluous.

Clark led his players in sympathetic, moderately well-oiled readings. The same, alas, cannot be said of the Baroque offerings.

Each emerged sluggish and ragged. Violinist Kimiyo Takeya brought a scratchy sound to her solo duties in Vivaldi, while in Bach, James Thatcher had the same problems on his hornlike Baroque trumpet as many a modern-trumpet player encounters: heavy on the clams.