MUSIC REVIEW : Restraint Marks Pacific Symphony Concert at Arts Center

In his looks and conducting style, Kazimierz Kord evokes familiar silhouettes of Romantic conductors such as Liszt and Berlioz: a nimbus of shoulder-length hair flying about the head, body pulled into a tensed arc, legs planted wide and both arms scooping down to the ground or storming the heavens.

But the musical results were far from flamboyant expressions of individuality when Kord, music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, guest-conducted the Pacific Symphony in music by Bartok, Liszt and Berlioz on Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

In fact, Kord gave a surprisingly patrician, poised account of Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique,” long in the French values of transparency, balance and proportion, and short in hot-blooded, demonic drama and excitement.

Kord’s vision of the idee fixe provided, perhaps, the central concept from which everything else followed. For Kord, who emphasized delicacy, clarity of line, restraint and lightness, the theme embodied a certain sweetness, loveliness, comfort; it was a young person’s sense of innocent love.

This was a distinct, interesting view, but it did not inspire the surging emotions described in the program Berlioz provided.

Kord made the slow movement a gentle reverie rather than a necessary recovery from torment. And while the pulse appeared to beat more hotly in the last two movements, the sense of controlled momentum kept the excitement contained.

For the orchestra, Berlioz’s Symphony seemed a stretch. Everyone appeared to be working hard, and while the results were reasonably solid, there were few moments when one could revel in taut, vivid playing. In particular, the brass players’ tone production could be rough, and they were less secure in independent lines than when playing together.

Alexander Peskanov was the powerful soloist in Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Peskanov showed prodigious technique but was not strong in poetic feeling, despite his mastery of plush, spectral touch in the quietest passages.

Peskanov could be brilliant, virtuosic, but also finicky in phrasing, overreliant upon steely finger work and disinclined to reveal much thoughtfulness of concept. Despite some crude playing from the orchestra, Kord was a careful, attentive partner.

The program opened with Bartok’s Two Portraits, with concertmaster Endre Granat contributing warm but emotionally restrained solo work.

Incidental intelligence: Playing next to Granat was famed violinist Israel Baker, regular second violinist in the Heifetz-Piatigorsky Chamber Concerts and member of the Pacific Art Trio. Baker was concertmaster of the Pacific Symphony until 1985.