MUSIC REVIEW : Pacific Symphony Hails Bernstein : Director Carl St. Clair paid tribute to his recently deceased mentor and teacher.

With emotion audible in his voice, Pacific Symphony music director Carl St. Clair prefaced the second half of the orchestra’s concert Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center with dedicatory remarks to the memory of Leonard Bernstein, his mentor and teacher who died on Oct. 14.

St. Clair said he selected works on his first two programs this season with the Pacific that he strongly associated with Bernstein.

It seemed surprising, then--or was the personal meaning too great?--that the new music director offered an expressively muted reading of Tchaikovsky’s expansive and triumphant Symphony No. 5.

This was a no-nonsense, no-heart-on-sleeve, almost anti-Romantic account. St. Clair drew compacted, driven, strongly pulsed lines. He refused to indulge in swooping, sculpted or blossoming phrasings, and so dampened the composer’s expressive range.

The orchestra, which continues to sound more unified and purposeful in ensemble, offered energetic climaxes but failed to respond with lushness and precise attack. James Thatcher played the horn solo of the second movement with uncharacteristic dryness.

The conductor forestalled premature applause by barely pausing between the first two movements. But the clap-happy audience found opportunities to express approval between the second and third movements and again after the pause before the final grand march in the last. Other audiences have similarly been misled, despite the pause on the dominant chord .

St. Clair opened the second half of the program with “Greeting,” a portion of Bernstein’s last work, “Arias and Barcarolles.” Carla Connors brought a creamy soprano to the low-lying tessitura of this gentle, four-minute lullaby.

Bartok’s Viola Concerto, completed from sketches after the composer’s death by Tibor Serly, formed the centerpiece of the first half. The dazzling soloist was Donald McInnes, who holds the William Primrose chair in viola at USC. (Primrose had commissioned the concerto from Bartok.)

McInnes commanded a range from big, full-bodied tone to spectral, filigreed lightness, and tossed off the challenges with ease. He proved lacking only in the demonic Hungarian folk accents in the final movement. St. Clair accompanied with mesmerizing attentiveness.

The conductor opened the program with a jaunty, if at times boomingly percussive, account of the Overture to Rossini’s “La Gazza Ladra,” a not-very-satisfactory replacement for the originally announced Prelude to Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.” Again, a Bernstein connection was offered as the reason for the change. St. Clair had conducted the Rossini in joint concerts with his mentor on tour in Europe in 1989.