O.C. MUSIC REVIEW : Clark’s Last Bows With the Pacific Symphony

Keith Clark’s tenure as music director of the Pacific Symphony--the orchestra he founded in 1979--came to a bitter, poignant, perhaps humiliating end this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Clark returned to the stage after conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on Wednesday, and in response to audience applause, led the orchestra and Pacific Chorale in a hushed account of Mozart’s “Ave, verum corpus” as an encore.

He took a solo bow acknowledging the many in the audience who were standing, then turned and applauded the orchestra.

The orchestra did not applaud back.

At one time, the issue of whether to retain Clark may have divided the orchestra’s board of directors. Some long-term subscribers may have been ruffled. Critics may have disagreed. Some orchestra members may have protested early on. But at the close, the musicians spoke with one voice, and it did not speak in Clark’s favor.

Under such circumstances, a discussion of the actual music-making might be considered a bit extraneous were it not for the superb, songful playing of cellist Lynn Harrell.

Harrell was the soloist in Joan Tower’s attractive post-modern and impressionistic “Music for Cello and Orchestra” and in Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme.”

Harrell negotiated Tower’s many demanding double- and triple-stops with apparent ease. He traversed Tchaikovsky’s variations with delicacy, warmth and poise. He was a master of evenness in dynamics and color throughout the compass of the instrument--the 1673 Jacqueline Du Pre Stradivarius, according to the program.

Clark accompanied with care and attention, and the orchestra responded supportively.

When it came to Beethoven’s Ninth, however, Clark gave a typically unfocused, dispiriting interpretation, workmanlike at best, pedantic and insensitive at worst.

The orchestra followed gamely. The Pacific Chorale sang with strength if not much clarity.

The solo quartet--soprano Janice Yoes, mezzo-soprano Jacalyn Bower, tenor William Lewis and bass James Patterson (who came to grief in his opening statement)--were harried by Clark’s insensitively speedy tempos.

The program is scheduled for a repeat on Thursday.