Starting With a Serious but Showy Affair

Proving that weighty music can be entertaining as well as provocative, Carl St.Clair began an 18th season by the Pacific Symphony Orchestra with a serious but showy program that his skilled band of instrumentalists played with aplomb.

Beginning with Wagner’s challenging “Tannhauser” Overture and Richard Strauss’ kaleidoscopic tone-poem “Don Juan”--in musically astute and technically spotless performances, except for the top of the Overture, which began nervously, probably due to a talkative child in the audience--this agenda climaxed with the austere beauties of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, played authoritatively by guest soloist Mark Kaplan.

The long-term accumulation and steady interaction of gifted musical personnel in the orchestra has produced an ensemble of virtuoso principals and talented associates, all coming together under the solid and sometimes inspired guidance of music director St.Clair.

As heard Wednesday night in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the orchestra has not yet reached the loftiest plateau of mechanical achievement, but it is certainly approaching such a place.

The ensemble’s regular brightness and rich detailing in its Wagner and Strauss playing, which offered controlled lyric flights along with full-throated brilliance, displayed long-term accomplishment. Among others, the standout soloists included the entire horn section--John Reynolds, Mark Adams, James Taylor, Russell Dicey and Stephanie Furry--and guest concertmaster Philip Palermo.

Replacing the scheduled Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, who canceled her appearance in a dispute over the live taping and public radio broadcast of the second performance Thursday, Kaplan provided a serious reminder that Sibelius’ masterpiece used to be considered a special-occasion work, not just another test-piece for fiddlers coming up in the ranks.

For those with memories of incandescent performances of the concerto--by, among others, Ruggiero Ricci and Camilla Wicks--Kaplan proved his place in distinguished company.

He effortlessly dismissed the work’s technical hurdles, then focused on its soaring poetry and emphasized its intense dramatic points. Throughout, he produced a varied and burnished tone and made sense for his listeners of the work’s earnest rhetoric. For once, the piece emerged a deep and substantial statement, not just a rite of matriculation. St.Clair and the orchestra participated wholeheartedly in this polished reading.