MUSIC REVIEW : OBSCURE WORKS FROM BERNSTEIN STAY THAT WAY

The final program in the Pacific Symphony’s Bernstein mini-festival lacked a number of the crucial elements found at concerts held last week at Segerstrom Hall: percussive, jazzy repertory, hummable tunes, a big-name artist such as Lukas Foss and--perhaps as a result of the aforementioned--an audience.

Yet for the hundred or so who gathered quietly next door at the South Coast Repertory Theatre on Monday, the chamber event offered something its predecessors didn’t have--unhackneyed, even adventurous, programming.

Three excerpts from Mass and the Clarinet Sonata proved the sole works approaching familiarity. Even a die-hard fan of the composer would be forgiven ignorance of such obscure Bernsteinia as the two vocal collections “Five Kid’s Songs” and “La Bonne Cuisine,” or the short brass suite that pays musical tribute to the Bernstein dogs, or the biographical “Anniversaries” for piano.

As is so often the case, obscure music is obscure for a good reason. Through most of the evening, one had the nagging sensation that most of this music deserved no stronger a tag than trivial, despite the earnest readings by members of the Pacific Symphony, soprano Evelyn de la Rosa and pianists Michael Zearott and Sandra Matthews.

Although De la Rosa offered an attractive, well-focused tone coupled with a refreshing air of restraint, the two cloyingly cute song cycles, utilizing the silliest of texts, failed to impress. Matthews provided capable support.

The remainder of the agenda was dominated by Zearott, who caressed the keys of the muddy-sounding baby grand and continually mugged his approval of a succession of humdrum performances by: James Kanter, uneven and stuffy in a stilted reading of the Clarinet Sonata; John Acosta, tentative and insecure in a cello-and-piano setting of three “Meditations” from Mass; a brass contingent from the Pacific Symphony--Anthony Plog, James Self, Alexander Barber and James Thatcher--that proved capable, if uninspired, in those throwaway canine salutes.

Left alone on stage, Zearott played seven “Anniversaries” (brief portraits of such figures as Aaron Copland, William Schuman and the Koussevitzkys) with a delicate touch and a sensitive ear to Bernstein’s quirky rhythms and mood shifts.