Music and Dance Reviews : Leon Fleisher Closes Pacific Symphony Season

For nearly 25 years, Leon Fleisher has made what seemed a career detour into a mainstream occupation.

As a left-handed pianist--when Fleisher was 37, his right hand was made inoperative by a disorder later diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome--the American musician has successfully specialized in and expanded that repertory. At the same time, his pursuit of a conducting career has borne fruit; actually, Fleisher was, long before being struck by the hand-disorder, a conducting protege of Pierre Monteux, who saw the breadth of his talents.

Now 61, Fleisher seems in his prime as both pianist and conductor. His first appearance in Orange County, Wednesday night, when he led the Pacific Symphony in a Beethoven/Ravel/Rachmaninoff program at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa, displayed his mastery impressively.

Ending its fourth season in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the ensemble played both splendidly and lethargically, by turns. No doubt the most inconsistent of the more visible symphonic bands in Southern California, the Pacific Symphony can soar or crawl, depending on the occasion, the conductor and a number of other variables.

Wednesday, the orchestra gave its deepest attention and best efforts to Fleisher--in the final movements of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony.

Here, players and conductor achieved a wondrous combination of immaculate execution, emotional expansion and artistic reserve. The pathos of the Adagio, which under some leaders can grow excessive, emerged at once pristine and seductive. The finale proved, as it can, cathartic, authoritative and moving--a conclusive statement summing up all that precedes it.

Earlier, however, in the opening movements of the symphony, but particularly in Beethoven’s “Coriolan” Overture, the orchestra vacillated between crystalline transparency and vague and muddy textures, between stunning, mellow wind playing and less-than-clean blasts, between perfectly aligned attacks and flabby entrances.

At mid-program, Fleisher, conducting Ravel’s Left-Hand Concerto from the keyboard, seemed to give the players no choices.

With a hair-raising, definitive reading of Ravel’s masterpiece emerging from the grand piano, and commanding, irresistible gestures from the leader, the orchestra responded in kind.

The performance moved ineluctably from its threatening beginning to its climactic resolution, in a straight line. For once, the subsequent standing ovation seemed appropriate.