MUSIC REVIEW : Clark Conducts a Foolhardy Wagner Concert

The Pacific Symphony Orchestra didn’t label its concert Tuesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center a Thanksgiving celebration. Nevertheless, Keith Clark, the ex-music-director-to-be, served up a turkey.

Gobble, gobble.

This wasn’t a modest, everyday bird stuffed with ordinary bread. This was a great, big, tough, feathery, sloppy, noisy, superannuated, Wagnerian turkey chock full of rancid chestnuts. Clark doesn’t fool around.

Bravely, he led his scrappy, patently under-rehearsed band--which is capable of far better things--through a mishmash of highlights from the mighty “Ring” cycle. Rudely, he stitched unrelated sections together and piled bombastic climax on bombastic climax. The result lent new depths of meaning to the concept of incoherence.

If Clark concerns himself with such trivial matters as expresssive tension, dynamic differentiation, melodic subtlety or the delineation of lyrical calms to offset dramatic storms, he kept his concerns pretty much a secret on this occasion. His primary interest seemed to be the projection of pomp.

He waved his arms in nice circular motions. Whether dealing with lofty poetry or agitated prose, he stirred a thick and lumpy Wagnerian soup.

Under the circumstances, the poor singers were left pretty much to their own devices. They were, for the most part, poor singers, and their devices proved perfunctory.

At least Rita Hunter--who replaced the originally announced Klara Barlow as Fricka, Sieglinde and Brunnhilde--mustered some imposing heroic outbursts and sustained a semblance of the grand old operatic manner. She tired toward the end of the unreasonable marathon, however, and steadiness isn’t her forte. Forte is her forte.

Jerome Hines, the official box-office attraction, barked the utterances of the chief of the gods with woofy tone, approximate pitch and neutral vowels. He can be forgiven for losing his place in the middle of Wotan’s Farewell, but, at 67, really shouldn’t be attempting this sort of thing in public.

William Lewis, Bill of all tenoral trades and a veteran of many operatic wars, shouted his raspy way through the love music of both Siegmund and Siegfried.

Hector Vasquez invoked meek thunder as Donner. Anita Protich, Eugenia Hamilton and Adelaide Sinclair introduced stridency as the three little maids from the Rhine.

The high point of the evening came when the maestro inadvertently smashed his baton on the music stand, sending splinters flying to the accompaniment of the “Ride of the Valkyries.” Undaunted, he conducted the subsequent “Walkure” finale with his bare hands.

Many in the audience, obviously sensing that this feat couldn’t be topped, went home at intermission. Your faithful scribe, slave to duty, stayed to the bitter end.

Incidental intelligence:

1--Advertising for this concert heralded Hines as a “superstar,” which is wishful thinking. The blurb also claimed that his voice “seems to open up the deeper it descends.” Unfortunately, the basso sang only baritone music on this occasion--nothing deep.

2--The printed program, a veritable festival of confusion and errors, promised Hines, not the tenor, as Siegmund. The annotator also forgot to include the text for Wotan’s Farewell, even though it functioned as the centerpiece of the concert.

3--A good ticket for this fowl bagatelle cost $49.