Pasternack’s Variation on a Winning Theme : Music: The pianist will put his top-ranked talent to work when he brings an intimate Rachmaninoff piece to an Irvine Meadows audience.

In 1988, Benjamin Pasternack won the 40th Busoni International Piano Competition. He won the grand prize by unanimous vote the following year at the inaugural World Music Masters Piano Competition in Paris.

In 1993, Pasternack teaches piano students at Boston University one day a week (“not that many,” he said), plays perhaps 30 performances per year (“not a lot,” he said) and remains without a recording contract.

What gives?

“Winning a competition seems not to guarantee anything anymore,” said Pasternack, who appears Saturday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre as soloist with the Pacific Symphony.

“It’s nice to have, but it doesn’t mean too much,” he said. “It’s like winning an audition for an actor. The actor gets the part, but the real question is, how does he play the role?”

The latest role Pasternack has won is as the soloist in Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” on a program dubbed “From Russia With Love.” Music director Carl St.Clair also leads the orchestra in Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and the premiere of California composer William Kraft’s “Gossamer Glances.” (Kraft’s work was commissioned by the Assn. of California Symphony Orchestras, which is holding its three-day annual conference in Costa Mesa through Saturday .)

Pasternack was asked how a pianist sets about re-creating the intimacy of Rachmaninoff’s familiar 18th variation in the picnic-perfect open spaces of Irvine Meadows.

“It is a problem,” he said. “The truth is that one can control certain things, certain things are beyond control, and at some point you just have to forget that the sound has to go so far. But playing in a space like that is not really that different from playing in a large enclosed hall.

“The quality of the sound may be different, but the (necessary) projection is the same,” he said. “Whether the hall seats 20 or 20,000, whether indoors or out, the level of concentration of the musicians is the most important thing, far more than sound quality.

“In the case of Rachmaninoff, there’s enough variety and color in the music, enough sonority and pedal in the piano, to carry it.”

Can a piece like “Gossamer Glances”--described as being inspired by wisps of clouds and using “light and airy fragments of melody”--work in such a setting?

“It does seem pretty silly, doesn’t it?” he said.

In any case, Pasternack, who appeared with the Pacific last November as a last-minute replacement, is looking forward to collaborating again with St.Clair. By way of explanation, he invoked one of his former teachers, Mieczyslaw Horszowski.

“Horszowski--no, the legendary Horszowski, you have to say ‘the legendary,’ it’s part of his name now--once said that playing with an orchestra is often like playing with an overcoat on,” Pasternack said.

“I never have that feeling playing with Carl. He has an adventurous musical mind, and is so technically secure that he can accommodate a performance very quickly. Rather than being stuck imitating an old performance, it’s always a new experience,” he said.

Pasternack lives with his wife, Marlene, a music educator, and their 3-year-old son, Michael, in Boston. He mentioned two passions, one musical, one not.

“I got a VCR recently, and I’ve been going crazy watching a series of videos of Toscanini conducting,” he said. “Tremendously inspiring! . . .

“I’m also a big baseball fan, and I’m trying to get to as many ballparks as I can. I’ve been to Anaheim Stadium, but never to Dodger Stadium, so while I’m in California. . . .”

More than his competition victories, Pasternack, 36, considers his acceptance at the Curtis Institute of Music in his native Philadelphia at the age of 13 as the single defining moment of his musical career--”an indescribable feeling,” he said.

“I understood even at the time that it was a door.” He studied with Horszowski, Rudolf Serkin and Seymour Lipkin at Curtis, and later with Leon Fleisher and Leonard Shure.

Asked where he’d ultimately like that musical career to go, Pasternack paused before answering.

“To always have the opportunity to play the great music in good halls, with conscientious and interesting colleagues, for involved audiences,” he said. “Some people achieve that.”

* The Pacific Symphony plays Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” with soloist Benjamin Pasternack, plus William Kraft’s “Gossamer Glances” and Shostakovich’s Symphony No.5 on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. Grounds open for picnicking at 6 p.m. $10 to $46. (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).