Music : Mester Conducts Pasadena Finale

Late Romantic Russian music brought this season of the Pasadena Symphony to a close Saturday night in Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Conductor Jorge Mester admirably led a compact program of well-known Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky works.

The appearance of English pianist Moura Lympany gave the event a special edge. In her more than 50-year career, she has concentrated on the piano music of Rachmaninoff, with several excellent recordings that hold their own to this day.

Lympany’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 proved that, at 75, her superb musicianship is alive and well, and still demonstrates her special understanding of this composer. She glides over the melodic phrases with mesmerizing agility and commands a virtuosic skill for splashy and busy passages. Astonishingly, she retains an unfaltering stamina.

Mester concluded the program with a captivating reading of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6. Small problems of ensemble proved forgivable, in an overall performance this cohesive and satisfying.