MUSIC REVIEW : Glory Gone as Menuhin Performs at Arts Center

Monday will go down as a sad and painful day in the annals of Orange County music. It was the day that Yehudi Menuhin, whose technique has been deteriorating steadily for more than a decade, gave a performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto at the Orange County Performing Arts Center that would have been hooted off the stage if played by anyone other than that once-inestimable artist.

It was also the day that Keith Clark returned to the helm of the Pacific Symphony after a one-concert absence, bringing back to Segerstrom Hall the kind of unprepared leadership that persuaded the organization’s board of directors not to renew his contract after next season.

The one bright spot on the program, “Short Ride on a Fast Machine” by minimalist composer John Adams (of “Nixon in China” fame), was exhilarating but brief and seemed insufficiently rehearsed.

Menuhin, 71, has given us a recorded legacy of the Beethoven Concerto that is full of rare insight and spiritual depth. None of that was evident Monday. The once-golden tone was thin and frail, bowing stiff, not always under control. The violinist’s phrasing was broken; intonation was regularly a problem. He dropped notes, missed cues, erratically shifted gears, went his own way.

Under the circumstances, the elegiac, if not funereal, pacing he settled on for the second movement evoked new associations, suggesting the work could be retitled the “Eroica” Concerto--”in memory of” a great violinist.

Clark struggled manfully to keep soloist and orchestra together and the music-making coherent, which was no easy job given Menuhin’s waywardness. But there was no possibility of offering a credible interpretation of Beethoven’s score, only of getting through it.

Nonetheless, many in the audience gave Menuhin an enthusiastic reception, and he responded with Bach’s Praeludium from the Partita in E--played with timing skewed and awry--for an encore.

Less charitably, one may ask why Clark continues to parade aging, past-their-prime artists in front of his subscription audiences. Menuhin, who does not come cheap, is neither the first nor the last in this embarrassing line.

After intermission, Clark ventured a sturdy but unemotional and uninvolving performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. He rarely seemed to have any idea where the music was going or how to create continuity or emphasis. The return of the fate motif in the last movement, for instance, was unprepared and uneventful. But, typically, he ended with the burst of frenzy that revs up his audience.

The orchestra managed to play with force, clarity and unanimity of spirit, and even to create some suavity of phrasing and dynamics.

The program, which opened with Adams’ rousing, four-minute score, will be repeated today at 8 p.m. at the Center.