MUSIC AND DANCE : Guest Conductor Simon Revitalizes Pacific Symphony at Rampal Concert

If all had gone as planned, distinguished flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal would have been conductor as well as soloist at the Pacific Symphony concerts Monday and Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

But Rampal, 66, reportedly had to cut back his activities on doctor’s advice and appeared as soloist only. Beleaguered Pacific Symphony music director Keith Clark, whose tenure will end after next season, was recording in Czechoslovakia.

Enter Geoffrey Simon, 41, a resident of England and currently, in these jet-age times, music director of the Albany Symphony.

One wondered whether adequate substitute talent wasn’t available closer to home, why the search had to extend as far away as New York, why the organization seemed insufficiently prepared, lacking an assistant conductor.

No matter.

In his first West Coast appearance Monday, Simon--the first conductor other than Clark to lead the orchestra in a subscription classical concert--made a stirring impression. And the orchestra, reduced to a robust, chamber-size ensemble of about 50 members, played as if transformed.

With deft, economic, springy gestures, Simon elicited wit and sparkle in the Overture to Rossini’s “La Scala di seta”; virile, unforced tension in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, elegance in concertos by Mozart and Cimarosa.

Simon demonstrated uncommon musical intelligence and an unfailing sense of proportion, direction, balance and detail. He made only a few miscalculations of dynamic levels in the acoustically quirky Segerstrom Hall. But the hall was new to him, too.

Except for some occasionally edgy strings and rough-grained textures, the orchestra played with unaccustomed precision, unity, transparency and spirit.

Rampal, whose fabled technique showed definite signs of wear, played with breathy, wayward drive in Mozart’s Concerto No. 2 in D and with narrow, metallic tone in Cimarosa’s Concerto in G for Two Flutes. His cohort in the latter, Louise DiTullio, the orchestra’s principal flutist, counterpoised with warm, woody, ample tones. Simon accompanied with sensitivity.

Simon is the first in a line of guest conductors who will be scrutinized as possible successors to Clark. Pacific Symphony has entered a new, exciting phase.