Pacific Symphony Offers a Lush Opening Program

Felicitous variety usually marks Carl St.Clair’s pragmatic programming with the Pacific Symphony. But the American conductor’s new season began otherwise, Wednesday night in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

St.Clair’s Romantic/post-Romantic agenda ran a mini-gamut from 1844, the year Berlioz wrote the “Roman Carnival” Overture, to 1881, with Brahms’ beloved if potentially mundane B-flat Piano Concerto, to 1910, date of Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier,” a (later) suite of which made up the centerpiece of this evening.

There was some good news: The orchestra played splendidly, cohesively, even lushly in all parts of this overripe program. The players achieved genuine space between the notes, a telltale sign of instrumental accomplishment; the conductor’s urgent yet mellow approach melded art and craft.

In the “Roman Carnival” Overture, the playing could not have been more clarified or affectionate. The excerpts from “Rosenkavalier” boasted all the richness of the original: musical whipped-cream piled as high and as logically as a wedding cake.

At the conclusion, however, Brahms was shortchanged. The soloist, Cuban-born pianist Horacio Gutierrez, failed to project the work’s depths. His fingers worked but his passions seemed disengaged. The psychic struggles in the second movement suffered from lack of energy; the inspirations of the outer movements never materialized, and the heights of the slow movement were never reached.

Through the evening, but especially in the “Rosenkavalier” suite, soloists from within the orchestra distinguished themselves; among them, the new concertmaster Kevin Connolly, playing his first concert in that post. In the Brahms, solo cellist Timothy Landauer triumphed in the third movement.