MUSIC REVIEWS : An Ambitious Effort by Pacific Symphony

Although the Pacific Symphony’s concert Wednesday night at Orange County Performing Arts Center was a noble and ambitious effort, the results ran only surface deep.

This was partially the fault of the music at hand. John Corigliano’s 1968 Piano Concerto, which formed the main part of the first half, is a big, hyper-athletic, theatrical work, a young man’s composition (the composer was 30 at the time of its premiere) that tries hard to dazzle, and succeeds, but does little else.

Perhaps the most satisfying way to listen to the work, written in this composer’s trademark eclectic style, is to spot the quotes--from Bartok, from Stravinsky, from Copland, from the Dies Irae, and on and on. Corigliano slants this mix very much toward the muscular, driving, brutal end of the spectrum--with heavy doses of aggressive brass and percussion and pounding piano--but occasionally breaks things up with an all-too-sweet, Americana-type lyricism. The combination is accessible and exciting and about as subtle and nourishing as a Stallone movie.

It does supply, however, four movements (and 35 minutes) of very high octane fuel for pianist and orchestra, and it served well to display the virtuoso talents of French Canadian soloist Alain Lefevre, conductor Carl St. Clair and the Pacific Symphony--all of whom will record the work this week. They are ready.

Opening the concert (and also slated for recording) was the first orchestral performance of the five-minute “Postcard” by Pacific Symphony’s composer-in-residence Frank Ticheli. It’s a splashy and metrically romping piece, quirky and pleasing, crescendoing off the page. St. Clair et al. played it with polish and energy.

The conductor led a solid but all-too-routine performance of Beethoven’s Fifth to conclude. Proper instrumental balances proved a major oversight here, robbing the music of detail and depth as well as of the exuberance the composer achieved by tossing his ideas throughout the orchestra.