MUSIC REVIEW : OFFERING AT REPERTORY A BIT MARRED

Amazing what a difference playing in tune can make. Conductor Keith Clark allowed frayed, insecure pitch from the violins of an 11-member ensemble drawn from the Pacific Symphony to mar more than half the chamber music program he led Monday at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

Instead of creating a halo of warmth around colleague Mindy Ball’s gracious, earnest, virtuosic solo playing in Marcel Grandjany’s “Aria in Classic Style,” the strings turned the composer’s expansive melody--which evoked “Ombra mai fu” from Handel’s “Serse”--into a grating trial.

Similarly, Clark’s account of Mozart’s Serenade No. 6 in D, “Serenata Notturna,” which opened the program, sounded squirrelly and charmless, though certainly contributing to the problem were Clark’s brisk, graceless rhythms and minimal dynamic contrast between the solo string quintet and the full--but small--ensemble.

Eventually, after a brief tuning up, the string orchestra was able to provide sensitive, glowing support for an impressive account of Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, which closed the program.

Horn player James Thatcher, principal with the Pacific Symphony, once past a nervous and oddly clipped Prologue, offered superb musicianship and expressivity, tracing the swelling and fading hunting calls for Tennyson’s Nocturne, for instance, with arching, well-nourished tone.

Tenor Jonathan Mack brought exemplary lyric, burnished vocalism to his duties, especially in a sense of dreamy, death-yearning in Keats’ Sonnet. Sadly, though, his strength of voice and sense of word-painting proved insufficient to convey the full harrowing impact of “This ae nighte.”

On their own, Mack and Ball also interpreted Britten’s “A Birthday Hansel” with attractive sweep, lightness and reverie.