MUSIC REVIEW : Pacific Symphony Premieres Ticheli’s ‘Voices’

Youth was well served by the Pacific Symphony’s latest program, presented Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

With the world premiere of a work written by an American composer born in 1958, the appearance of an American violinist born the same year, and the entire performance overseen by an American conductor born in 1952, this was not only a celebration of native-born talents, but one of youthfulness in spirit and actuality.

More important, it gave the 15-year-old Pacific ensemble strong opportunities to show off not only its current achievement but the distance it has come in recent seasons toward realizing some of its ever-present promise.

At no point in its short history could this orchestra be accused of specializing in the exacting and exposing works of Franz Joseph Haydn. On Wednesday, in the Symphony No. 88, the orchestra played with lean, but not wiry, tone, warm but controlled sound, near-immaculate balances and admirable Classical textures. Music director Carl St.Clair led a clarified performance illuminated by pertinent details of rhythm, attack and dynamics in as sunny and brisk an experience as one ever expects from this composer.

At the other end of the program, the Violin Concerto of Beethoven received the same kind of careful and sculptured treatment from the orchestra, and an uneventful, inconsistent performance by the soloist, Robert McDuffie.

McDuffie’s approach seemed to be one of nonchalance, not an inappropriate stance given the solidity of St.Clair’s partnership. But small blemishes of timing and intonation, caused perhaps by too-great a relaxation on the part of the soloist himself, got in the way. The mere strength of McDuffie’s acknowledged technique could not always save an unpolished solo performance, which seemed more the result of habit than of choice.

The first performance of Frank Ticheli’s “Radiant Voices” fell between the familiar works on this program.

Commissioned by the Pacific Symphony, the new piece by the young USC assistant professor--and composer-in-residence at this orchestra--is a coherent and attractive 21-minute alternation between modified instrumental lyricism and noisy, cannily chaotic orchestral climaxes.

Ticheli’s present style seems to be that familiar, eclectic, late-20th-Century symphonic amalgam one hears regularly in commercial musical backgrounds to films and television shows, a mixture clearly meant to represent alienation and yearning.

It may be abrasive--and purposefully so--but it is not unbearable.

The proof of that came in a loud audience reaction at the conclusion of what appeared to be a smooth and unblemished first performance. Composer and conductor shared bows.