MUSIC / CHRIS PASLES : Handel With Care : When Performing ‘Messiah,’ Paul Anthony McRae Would Rather Do What’s Best Than What’s ‘Correct’

At a time when musical purists often insist on “authentic” performances of Handel’s “Messiah,” conductor Paul Anthony McRae rejects any single party line.

“It’s really difficult for anyone to say he has the politically correct version of this work,” McRae said in a recent phone interview from his home in Greensboro, N.C.

For one thing, “Handel revised it each of the five times he was involved with (producing) it,” the conductor said. For another, although “certain practices must be adhered to in performing baroque music, I also believe that what sounds best should be heard.”

When he conducts the Pacific Symphony and the Pacific Chorale in the familiar oratorio today , audiences “will be listening to a mixture of a lot of different things,” he said. (The performance is sold out.)

Historically “correct” tempos at typically “breakneck speed,” for instance, are out. “I do not like to conduct this particular work this way,” he said.

Dramatic readings of the text, on the other hand, are in for McRae, in contrast to the purists’ leanings.

“I really pay a lot of attention and detail to the biblical text,” McRae said. “I like to do personal things to add meaning. It’s difficult to be very specific. There are little things that increase the intensity of a line.”

There will be some “traditional cuts, predominantly in the Third Part” because “to do the complete performance would be over three hours.” But the da capa structure of the arias (A-B-A) will remain intact. “I’m a real purist when it comes to that,” he insisted. “To do the A section alone is not correct.”

Embellishments? “Perhaps . . . I would like to hear what (the soloists) have to offer.”

Overall, he said, “you will probably feel more passion . . . than in pure Baroque-type performances (because) I’m a very passionate musician.

“If I’m not moved at a performance, it’s just not worth my time. Unfortunately, too many times I go to a performance and find that magic is missing on stage.”

McRae, 45, was born in Liverpool, England, but retains no British accent. “My parents brought me to New York when I was about 7,” he said. “Although they (still) sound very British, I have been here long enough not to sound like that at all.”

He studied trumpet and conducting at the Juilliard School of Music and the Eastman School of Music. At 19, he became principal trumpet at the Rochester Philharmonic, where he played for six years. But eventually he found “so many labor problems going on there that one day I literally walked in, got teary-eyed and resigned.

“I had had enough,” he said. “I didn’t want to be jerked around. I felt like a yo-yo on a string. I didn’t know whether the orchestra would fold.”

In fact, he abandoned music and began working in the unrelated field of marketing. That job, he insisted, did him a world of good.

“I grew, actually, as a human being,” he said. “I got to know what life was all about. Fortunately, that was probably the greatest three years of (my) growing and developing.”

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A chance encounter at a party, however, prompted his return to music. He heard about an opening for the principal trumpet position at the Ft. Lauderdale Symphony. When the orchestra management contacted him, he plunged into practicing again.

“In three days, I was playing as well as ever,” he said.

“It was remarkable how I had shed all the bad habits I had experienced since learning to play as a young child. I approached the instrument from a feeling of maturity I had never felt before. They hired me on the spot.”

He was principal trumpet from 1976 to ’82. Then, feeling “quite disappointed at the level of music-making in south Florida in the late ‘70s,” he decided to pursue the other arm of his training. He founded the Boca Raton Symphony in 1982 and served as its music director until 1984, when the orchestra merged with the Ft. Lauderdale Symphony (to become the Florida Philharmonic).

Emerson Buckley, director of the Ft. Lauderdale Symphony, took over as music director of the new organization. McRae became resident conductor and stayed there until 1987, when he became music director of both the Greensboro (N.C.) Symphony and the Lake Forest (Ill.) Symphony, positions he still holds.

In the mid-’80s, he also began making appearances as a guest conductor with the London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic and the English Chamber Orchestra, among other orchestras.

“I would like to do a lot more, but I’ve got 16 weeks of subscription concerts, which blocks a lot of my time in the winter,” he said. “I’m delighted to come out to do this performance.”

McRae had planned to conduct the Pacific’s “Messiah” last year, but about two weeks before the December concert, he had to have emergency surgery on a detached retina.

“It laid me up for a while. So I asked to be released. The (Pacific) management was kind enough to reschedule for this year.” (Michael Palmer conducted that performance instead.)

Since the first operation, he had to have a second, on the other eye, for a cataract.

“It’s incredible how perfectly I can see now,” he said. “I was missing so much of life!”

* Paul Anthony McRae will lead the Pacific Symphony and Pacific Chorale in Handel’s “Messiah” today at 3:30 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. SOLD OUT. (714) 740-2000. *

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED . . . : The New York Post came to the Orange County Performing Arts Center for the first time when Clive Barnes reviewed the new Kevin McKenzie/American Ballet Theatre production of “The Nutcracker” last week.

Barnes took a typically New-York-is-the-center-of-the-universe attitude. He wrote that if the production “were an out-of-town Broadway opening--which in a sense it is, for it is due at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York next (May)--you would have to say it needed work. How much or how little is a matter of personal preference.

“Let me suggest that it needs quite a bit, although I trust I am being firm only to be kind.”

Barnes went on to say that “the major thing the production has going for it--apart from Tchaikovsky’s hardy perennial of a score--is the charm and originality of Paul Kelly’s scenery.” The critic also liked Theoni V. Aldregde’s costumes.

But overall, the production “at present, lacks clarity and choreographic grace,” he wrote.

Barnes found that Wendy Wasserstein’s libretto “(although) intended to make the ballet’s story more interesting and plausible, only succeeds in making it more muddled . . .

“Not that Wasserstein’s libretto is the only fault of this radically new ‘Nutcracker.’ The choreography by the company’s artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, is not inspired either.

“This is the first time McKenzie has attempted choreography for a major company. And although his dancers--particularly in the snowflakes scene and even in the second act’s ‘Waltz of the Flowers’--often show a promising fluency and style, they also lack much in the way of creative spark.”

Perhaps Barnes meant to write “McKenzie’s dances “ instead of “dancers “ here, because later he wrote that “the company--revitalized under McKenzie’s overall direction--is dancing well.”

But Barnes’ conclusion isn’t terribly affirming: “The experiment of humanizing ‘The Nutcracker’--of making it more intelligent-friendly--is worthwhile, even noble. But it needs more work. Back to the drawing board.”