MUSIC REVIEWS : PASADENA SYMPHONY

Not every music director knows how to stay in the 20th Century without offending the sensibilities of his audience. But you can count Jorge Mester among those who do.

Saturday he began his third season before the Pasadena Symphony with an ambitious and splashy program, carefully avoiding traditional fare. What’s more, he managed to put a rousing extrovert’s stamp on this locally celebrated, well-attended event in Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

If in the process of surveying Kodaly’s “Hary Janos” Suite, Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds with David Korevaar, Dohnanyi’s “Variations on a Nursery Song” and (oops) Ravel’s “Bolero” the strings got less than a workout, consider it the only disadvantage of such an agenda.

Otherwise, Mester’s enthusiasm--not unlike that of a ringmaster’s--seemed to spread throughout the orchestra. How could it not, when, after the Kodaly, he insisted on giving solo bows to at least 20 individuals?

But the applause-milking was not on his own behalf, and it certainly was deserved. The stop-on-a-dime fortissimo explosions were utterly authoritative, as were the finely graded dynamics heard at the soft end of the scale.

Mester also capitalized on the earthy languor and guttural Hungarianisms of Kodaly’s best-known work, making its characterful depths graphic. So intent on polishing each motif was he that the whole sometimes lost its coherence, however.

Similar problems arose elsewhere. Still, the seldom-heard Stravinsky brought a welcome respite from the big-scaled items. Pianist Korevaar cut through the unclearly voiced basses and winds, giving clarification to the intricate rhythms and dense passage work, even illuminating the subtle jazz impulses.

But his featured role in the Dohnanyi--playing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”--was mostly humorous. Here the violins finally inherited some choice writing, thanks to this deft exercise in surging late-Romanticism. Framed as a joke, the Straussian waltzes swirled deliciously. And as the band played on one could revel in its high spirits and many excellences.

Too bad Mester didn’t stop at this natural finale instead of tacking on “Bolero.” Nonetheless, one could appreciate the restraint.