Music : Brahms, Corigliano Share Pasadena Bill

Leave it to the Pasadena Symphony to make enthusiasm a reliable commodity.

In characteristic fashion Saturday night at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, the orchestra, under the ever-capable leadership of Jorge Mester, offered what could have been a routine program and turned it into an evening of importance.

The conductor, now in his seventh season as music director, opened the program with Berlioz’s cherishable Overture to “Beatrice and Benedict.” He maintained a lightness of texture conducive to the playful argumentativeness of the music--its bubbling cross-rhythms and quick juxtapositions of color--in a jauntily projected reading.

Mester then turned to the glaring obviousness of the 1977 Clarinet Concerto by the American composer John Corigliano. This piece has a bit of everything in it, from dueling timpani to quadraphonic brass, from insidious buzzings to glittering glissandos. It’s all gut-pounding and spooky effects, and precious little substance.

The ungrateful clarinet part, just another element--shrieks and rapid-fire noodling--in the din, was ably dispatched by Joaquin Valdepenas, principal clarinet of the Toronto Symphony, in his Los Angeles debut. Mester and his band gave a hugely energetic and impressively executed account of the orchestral barbarities.

After intermission, Mester led a firmly guided, plain-spoken performance of Brahms’ First Symphony. He proved meticulously attentive to detail and constant in his shaping of phrases. If the reading shed no new light on this familiar music, it never stagnated, and served as a solid reminder of the dependable excellences of this ensemble.