Pasadena Symphony Showcases Its Strength in Numbers

The Pasadena Symphony’s second concert of the season was a display program for the orchestra without a guest soloist. Still, thrills abounded: These players in their top form--as they were Saturday night in handsomely refurbished Pasadena Civic Auditorium--can take one’s breath away.

Under the authoritative but genial leadership of music director Jorge Mester, this showcase agenda offered Carlos Chavez’s lean and mean “Sinfonia india” (1942), the ubiquitous “Italian” Symphony by Mendelssohn and Richard Strauss’ compendium of large-orchestra devices, the tone-poem “Ein Heldenleben.”

What had to excite the connoisseur were the technical workings, virtuoso resources and effortless musical balances the orchestra showed in what could have been merely a grueling test.

“Heldenleben,” which can be considered the most complex and demanding of potboilers, made great good sense and moved inexorably and with broad contrasts to its logical conclusion. The conductor and his ensemble found freshness and irresistibility--and an enchanting core of soft playing--in the familiar lines of the “Italian” Symphony. And “Sinfonia india,” which, to be politically correct in 1997 would have to be called something like “Sinfonia Meso-Americana,” exerted its considerable neoclassic charms.

Every section of the orchestra achieved an artistic plateau; kudos should go to, among others, violinist Peter McHugh--the orchestra’s new concertmaster this season--chief hornist James Thatcher, head of trumpets Timothy Morrison and the leader of the wondrous cello section, Douglas Davis.