Closing Notes of Symphony Season : Maestro Boris Brott ends his inaugural effort with a grand romantic menu of Beethoven offerings.

A large chandelier, the latest experiment in stage decor, hung above the stage of the Oxnard Civic Auditorium. The sweeping, familiar strains of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony--which might be considered the musical equivalent of a chandelier--churned and gleamed below.

And so the season ended and the chapter closed on Boris Brott’s first whirlwind season in Ventura County. This was the season that maestro Brott, the energetic and enterprising conductor from Hamilton, Canada, became only the second conductor in the Ventura County Symphony’s 31-year history.

Fittingly, the finale of Brott’s inaugural season ended with a grand romantic menu under the cheeky, marketable banner of “Two Fifths of Beethoven”--namely the Fifth Symphony and the Piano Concerto No. 5, the “Emperor.”

If only the great composer knew what puns his memory would yield in the name of luring audiences.

But then, luring audiences, increasing the public profile of the orchestra, has clearly been a priority in the new symphony regime. Yes, the new symphony is selling out halls. Is it also selling out in other ways? The concerned concert-goer wants to know.

To dismiss such campaign efforts on the grounds of shameless populism would be foolish. In the present climate of conservatism and cutbacks in the arts, we can only benefit from efforts to advance the cause of serious music.

But for anybody who has paid attention to the history of the symphony, comparisons between new and old orchestra are inevitable. The most glaring difference has to do with music of our time.

Founding conductor Frank Salazar maintained a passionate interest in 20th-Century music and insisted on foisting it on the concert-going public. On the other hand, Brott, with his conservative programming this past season, has unwittingly supported a general phobia about modern music.

The problem is: If no one is exposed to the music of our time, no one can learn to appreciate it.

Ironically, Brott has a reputation for supporting contemporary music in Canada, so we can only hope that he was only politely soft-peddling in his first year here. Then again, if ticket sales count for anything, Brott is giving the audience what they want to hear.

That having been said, Brott’s first season here was, paradoxically, at once stodgy and vivid--stodgy in its programming, and vivid in the matter of music-making. Brott exerts a firm hand and a bold idea about how an orchestra should sound.

The Beethoven program, for instance, made up in expressive performance what it may have lacked in imagination.

After the symphony’s assistant conductor Gregory Fried led the orchestra through a somber appetizer of the overture to “Coriolan,” Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti swept through the passages of the “Emperor” with breathtaking ease. The multiple curtain calls for Kuerti didn’t seem unreasonable.

All around Kuerti, Brott mustered muscularity and also dynamic sensitivity from the orchestral ranks.

The Fifth Symphony, unfortunately, is one of those great works whose back-of-the-hand familiarity and exploitation through mass media threatens to turn genius into kitsch right before our ears.

Those celebrated opening notes, once ominous, now conjure up images of luxury cars tooling down highways at sunset. The protracted finale, teasingly extended, begins to sound comical, like the syncopated gallop of a warhorse.

But aside from any such nagging problems in hearing the piece, Brott extracted its drama by keeping dynamics in check. In musical terms, the symphony is a story of struggle, light against dark, despair against hope. That story was conveyed as best it could be.

There were bright moments scattered throughout the ‘92-’93 season, from a well-turned reading of Debussy’s “Nocturne” on the opening program to a delightful concert version of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” this spring.

But still, one couldn’t help but feel a sense of innocence lost. It dawns on us, in retrospect, that Brott’s down-the-middle mode of programming is, rather than the exception, the rule in this cautious era in classical music.

Choral Watch

This will be a big weekend for chorale music in the county, as both the Ventura County Master Chorale and the Moorpark Masterworks Chorale wrap up their concert seasons on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

At the Libbey Bowl in Ojai, Burns Taft will lead his Ventura County Master Chorale, along with a 35-piece orchestra, in performing Josef Haydn’s monumental oratorio “The Creation.” Written when he was 63, and based on texts from the book of Genesis and Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” “The Creation” is one of Haydn’s crowning magnum opuses.

Soloists for the program are soprano Virenia Lind and bass James Drolling, both of whom sing with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and tenor Grey Brothers.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Conejo grade, the Moorpark Masterworks Chorale’s musical director James Stemen will polish up another fixture in the repertoire, Brahms’ “A German Requiem,” at two separate churches in the area. Soprano Marilyn Anderson and baritone John Rose Nelson will be soloists.

Die-hard choral music aficionados may enjoy a double dose in the space of a weekend.

WHERE AND WHEN

* The Ventura County Master Chorale will perform Haydn’s “The Creation” at Ojai’s Libbey Bowl at 8 p.m. Saturday and at 4 p.m. Sunday For more information, call (805) 653-7282.

* The Moorpark Masterworks Chorale will perform Brahms’ “A German Requiem” at 8 p.m. Saturday at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, 1305 Royal Ave. in Thousand Oaks, and at 4 p.m. Sunday at Christian Church, 301 W. Avenida de los Flores in Thousand Oaks. For more information, call (805) 378-1438.