Applebaum’s Symphony No. 4 Given Premiere in Pasadena

Arriving with weighty emotional freight, Edward Applebaum’s Symphony No. 4 received its premiere Saturday from the Pasadena Symphony and conductor Jorge Mester at Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

The Los Angeles-born Applebaum wrote the work for Mester in 1995, partly as an elegy for composer Stephen J. Albert, who was killed in a car accident in 1992 when he was 51.

Economically conceived and structured as a mosaic, the 25-minute single-movement piece contains quotations from Albert and Mahler, including, according to a program note, Applebaum “quoting Albert quoting Mahler.”

No one can argue with the heartfelt intentions, but much of the grieving and personal expression was difficult to apprehend. The work sounded like a product from the academy, post-Webern in vocabulary, sparse and fragmented in texture, episodic in its unfolding, utilizing an immense orchestra for the briefest coloristic effects.

Most effective were moments of rhythmic chugging, with their ominous tugs, and serene, layered chorale-like passages. The work built to a bright final cadence to fulfill the composer’s intentions of affirming the significance of Alpert’s life and expressing confidence for the future. Applebaum took bows from the stage.

After intermission, Lee Luvisi proved a sure-fingered but unimaginative soloist in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. While Mester urged his orchestra into surging if thick-textured playing, Luvisi responded with careful expression and little temperament. He was perhaps most free and alive in the Scherzo.

Sensitive contributions from the orchestra came from principal cellist Dennis Karmazyn and clarinetists Emily Bernstein and Virginia Loe in a rather fast-paced Andante.

Mester opened the program with a lush account of the two-minute Fanfare from Dukas’ “La Peri” and a rhythmically square reading of Revueltas’ catchy “Janitzio.”