Tonight, a Taste of the New : The long-awaited premiere of the Pacific Symphony’s first large-scale commissioned work is a major step for O.C. arts.

Orange County’s arts community is, it seems, forever “coming of age.”

The phrase has been heard especially often since 1986, when the Performing Arts Center opened and--as the building’s backers also liked to say--put the county “on the cultural map.” But while a shiny hall can be an important ingredient of a thriving arts scene, the creation of significant work may be a truer measure of long-term impact.

So it is no surprise that the Pacific Symphony is trumpeting what is not only its first commission of a large-scale work, but also the biggest musical commission in the county’s history. Announced nearly two years ago, “Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio,” a one-hour piece by Elliot Goldenthal, premieres tonight and will repeat Thursday in the center’s Segerstrom Hall.

It remains to be heard, obviously, how the work measures up artistically. But in any case, tonight is a benchmark for a county whose well-known taste for the familiar has expanded only sporadically to make room for the new.

“New work is risky,” says Louis G. Spisto, the orchestra’s executive director. “No doubt the majority of classical music subscribers in any city would prefer hearing the music they know and love.”

The Pacific has commissioned works in the past--seven since Carl St.Clair took over as music director in 1990. But they were short works, in the three- to 20-minute range, “used as appetizers in most instances for the main course,” Spisto said (the main course normally being a well-known classical or romantic symphony).

Such practice is common, even on the part of major orchestras, according to Jesse Rosen, managing director of the American Composers Orchestra. “You can feel you’ve done your good deed by commissioning a five-minute piece and getting it out of the way.”

Catherine French, president of the American Symphony Orchestra League, said 132 commissions are being performed this season by the league’s member groups. Lengths vary widely, she said, as do the sizes of the ensembles, from chamber groups to full orchestras. Some commissions, she added, are collaborations among several orchestras, which not only spread the cost but also ensure more than one performance.

Several experts noted that musical commissions are occurring at the highest rate in some time. Still, French said, “an hourlong piece is a considerable work at any time.”

Spisto said it’s especially unusual for a piece of that length to be commissioned by “an orchestra that’s not in the top five.” For one thing, he noted, it is expensive to mount a new work. One must consider everything from the actual cost of the commission itself (the amount paid to Goldenthal has not been made public) to the copying fees for the score--not to mention the danger that the piece will not draw as well as a familiar work.

Spisto said the Goldenthal commission is particularly risky because it touches on an emotional subject--the human costs of the Vietnam War--even though the composer has said the piece is avowedly nonpolitical.

Part of the payoff for such risks, financial and otherwise, would be a measure of prestige.

“Commissions are one way for orchestras to distinguish themselves, regardless of size,” said Gene Carr, the American Symphony Orchestra’s executive director. “Commissions, if properly done, can put not only a composer but an orchestra on the map.”

Of the Goldenthal work, he said: “I know all about this piece. I’ve been hearing about it for six months.”

New works are needed to keep an art form vital and to ensure that the form speaks to the “tempo of the times,” said John Duffy, a composer and the director of Meet the Composer, a group in New York that supports new music, jazz as well as classical.

In classical music, said Duffy, there is resistance to the new, and commissions such as the Pacific Symphony’s are all too rare. “American orchestras have a pathology, or habit, of performing only the works of dead composers.” Part of his group’s purpose, he said, is to “advocate for living composers.”

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The county’s oldest classical music organization, the Orange County Philharmonic Society, presents touring groups and therefore does little in the way of paying composers to create new works. In 1993, however, it commissioned James Hopkins to write a choral piece that was performed by the Pacific Chorale. “Songs of Eternity” was funded by Edward and Helen Shanbrom of Santa Ana as a memorial to their son who’d been killed in a traffic accident in 1986.

The Society also commissioned Jacob Druckman’s “Seraphic Games,” performed in Orange County by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1992. “If it’s appropriate, from time to time we’ll do a commission,” said Dean Corey, the Society’s executive director. However, he said, he generally finds it more productive to support local premieres offered by the traveling ensembles that the Society brings into Segerstrom Hall and the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

The Orange County Performing Arts Center, likewise, is primarily a presenter. It did commission a fanfare by William Kraft for its own opening gala and has participated financially in some touring musical theater and opera productions (it is, for instance, an investor in a new Tommy Tune musical, “Stage Door Charley,” coming to the center in June).

Spokesman Greg Patterson said the center may take a more active role, in association with others, in producing new touring musicals. But the center has made its greatest mark to date by presenting local and world premieres of new works by major dance companies as part of its ballet series.

The center has commissioned Ballet Pacific of Laguna Beach to create a youth ballet for presentation next year as part of the center’s outreach program.

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It isn’t the only example of an local organization directing its creative impulses toward its younger audiences. Opera Pacific has been among the county’s most cautious arts organizations, relying heavily on familiar works, at least in part because of the great expense of opera and the conservatism of local audiences. On Friday, however, it will offer the first performance of a new children’s opera, “Camino de Fe.” The bilingual 40-minute work by Hector Armiento, with libretto by Timothy Custer, is based on a story by a Santa Ana youngster, chosen in a contest that Opera Pacific sponsored.

Ballet Pacifica, meanwhile, also has helped create new work. This summer, the troupe will offer its fifth annual summer workshop for American choreographers. Each workshop so far has produced two new works for the troupe’s repertoire.

Four choreographers are chosen each year to spend 2 1/2 weeks with the company; they are given housing, a per diem, studio space and use of the company’s dancers. The workshops culminate with an informal staging.

Molly Lynch, Ballet Pacifica’s artistic director, says the goal is to provide a supportive creative environment for U.S. choreographers, some of whom, she says, are forced to move to Europe or elsewhere to find work.

Creating new work “is difficult with dance because you can’t sit down at a piano and compose a piece. You need the time and the resources,” Lynch said.

Undoubtedly the most active local organization in terms of creating works is South Coast Repertory, which was recognized for its attention to new voices with a regional Tony Award in 1988.

In addition to sponsoring playwright competitions, play readings and an annual Hispanic Writers Workshop, SCR commissions work from a variety of playwrights, from established ones to those still waiting to make a mark.

SCR does not perform all the plays it commissions, but most go through a development process that includes public readings. Some go on to premieres elsewhere.

“There are theaters that simply don’t do new work. There are theaters that do new work but don’t particularly commission. It’s an aesthetic choice,” said Jerry Patch, who as SCR’s dramaturge is charged with seeking out new writers.

“There’s a risk of becoming a museum if you don’t. Artists have to speak of their time to the people of their time.”