People’s Choice but a Connoisseur’s Lament

As polling methods go, it wasn’t perfect. The pollster simply asked the dozen or so people in an elevator: “Are you all Keith Clark fans?”

The group, descending from their second-tier seats at the Orange County Performing Arts Center after hearing Clark conduct the Pacific Symphony on Monday, shouted a loud, defiant, “Yes!” Some even went further, shouting, “Hurray, Keith!” or “We love Keith!”

The concert was significant as Clark’s first since the orchestra’s board of directors decided by a one-vote margin in February to make the 1988-89 concert season Clark’s last as the ensemble’s music director.

Clark founded the orchestra, nurtured it and, detractors have said, overbearingly dominated it for nine years. Reviewers have not been kind to him. But what about the man in the seat’s opinion--Jack and Jill Concert-Goer?

Add another 12 separate interviews to the number of people in that elevator and one hardly has the equivalent of a CBS/New York Times exit poll. But of those 24 people, 22 were clearly enthusiastic Clarkites.

Also, there was nearly a full house, and the crowd gave the conductor a loud round of applause at the end of the concert that seemed in keeping with the appreciation expressed by people interviewed during intermission and afterward.

However, people seemed to express more admiration for his civic contribution in giving the county an orchestra than for his musicianship.

“It grieves me to see what has happened to him,” said Virginia Hamer, who said she and her husband, Ernest, have been Pacific Symphony subscribers for more years than they can count. “He is the one who has started this thing, and to see it snatched from him is abominable.”

Ernest Hamer added: “They want to go uptown a bit too fast for their own good, this orchestra. My wife is the musical one in our family. I don’t know much, but whatever I’ve learned to appreciate about the music of an orchestra, I owe to Mr. Clark.”

Doug Scott, a Laguna Niguel resident who said that he was a high school music teacher in the Los Angeles area for 14 years, called Clark a competent conductor and said he would miss him: “His tempos seem to me to be pretty consistent. His beat is clear, and that’s not the case with a lot of conductors. What’s the problem?”

“It seems such a waste, after nine-plus years, to have this kind of publicity put upon him,” said Trent Wilson, a frequent concert-goer.

Such comments were typical, but not universal. “I think he should be able to stay on, but part time,” said Kittie Rau, a music lover and Pacific Symphony concert-goer who has long been active in cultural affairs in the county.

“I think Orange County needs to grow. I think he needs to grow. I think he needs to know he can be replaced. He can do a wonderful job (of conducting), but he isn’t consistent. There have been quite a few times when I left . . . and just felt, well, something was missing.”

For all the pro-Clark sentiment in that elevator, the wave of partisan shouts drew back into a silence from which there emerged a solitary, willful voice. “Nope,” said 75-year-old Jeanette Oppenheimer, leaning only slightly on her cane. “Nope, I’m not a fan.”

After the rest of the crowd drained away, she adjusted a thickly woven green sweater against the cool air, looked up with wide blue eyes, and said: “I was raised in Boston--right in Boston--on the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I went often. In my life, these are the conductors I grew up hearing: Koussevitzky, Munch, Mitropoulos, Bernstein. Krips too, at one time.”

Instead of quite finishing the thought, she shook her head again and shrugged as if in apology over the only conclusion that her experience left her, the only view to express now that someone had asked. “Nope.”

She critiqued the evening’s concert in detail. She liked the brief, opening piece by composer John Adams: “It was like a quick ride in the car with the top down.” Of course, she said, violin soloist Yehudi Menuhin was not a young man anymore but his rendition of the Beethoven Violin Concerto left her with the impression of him as “an elegant man.” As for the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4, well, the work held no more novelty for her and . . . finally, she came face to face with an unpleasant subject.

“I always like the pizzicati,” she said. Then, gently: “But Clark conducted as if he were in a hurry to get home. What can I say? I know a good conductor when I hear one.”