A Mild Response to St.Clair Debut

Carl St.Clair, music-director of the Pacific Symphony, made his debut as guest-conductor of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center last Thursday. He chose a reasonably compelling program, and enjoyed a reasonable success with a large subscription audience.

It was not, however, an event that seemed to capture the attention, much less the imagination, of many influential forces in this jaded musical metropolis. When St.Clair presented the first of his four concerts, he had to compete with a major premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, next door. On subsequent days, the cognoscenti of the local press turned out to be more interested in the modernism of Pierre Boulez at Carnegie Hall or the visit of the Bolshoi Orchestra to Brookville, Long Island.

By Monday, St.Clair’s debut yielded only one acknowledgment in the city’s four daily newspapers. On Saturday, the New York Times had mustered a three-paragraph, four-inch review of the opening concert.

Even the Times’ relative kiss-off apparently came as a surprise to the orchestra management. When asked on Thursday what coverage was expected, a Philharmonic public-relations associate had stated that two visitors from Southern California would be the only journalists in attendance that night.

James R. Oestreich, a secondary critic on the New York Times music staff, registered lukewarm approval, at best, after his first encounter with St.Clair. (Pedantic hemidemisemi-point: the Times writer innocently followed the Philharmonic example in ignoring the 41-year-old maestro’s quirky insistence that there be no space between the two parts of his last name.)

“Carl St. Clair was most impressive,” reported Oestreich, “where his services were most needed in the two big armfuls of music on the second half of the program. In Ginastera’s ‘Variaciones Concertantes’ and Ravel’s ‘Daphnis et Chloe’ Suite No. 2, Mr. St. Clair . . . showed a fine care for textural balances and a good sense of pacing.”

That was the extent of the positive evaluation.

“The first half of the program,” the reviewer continued, “to some extent betrayed Mr. St. Clair’s youth and perhaps a touch of nervousness. An uncertain entry by the first violins early in Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ Overture seemed to result not from any unclarity in his beat, which was didactic to a fault, but from the players’ inability to find their way into his lifeless, unflowing initial tempo.”

According to Oestreich, matters did not improve with the solo vehicle: “Nor did Mr. St. Clair show any great rapport with Vladimir Feltsman, the soloist in Schumann’s Piano Concerto. Mr. Feltsman seemed eager to move things along and revel in the syncopations; Mr. St. Clair and the orchestra dragged and sagged a bit.”

Geographical footnote: The New York Times placed the Pacific Symphony and, by association, the Orange County Performing Arts Center, “in Santa Ana, Calif.” Anyone for Costa Mesa?