From Russia, With Illumination

Fireworks burst on and off stage Saturday night at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. The offstage display at the end of the Pacific Symphony’s concert was expected; earlier unexpected pyrotechnics came from Russian pianist Yakov Kasman, who illuminated his performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with electrifying energy and sparkling tonal colors and followed the piece with a brittle, crackling march from “Love for Three Oranges,” by Prokofiev.

The second of the three top medal winners in the 1997 Van Cliburn Competition to appear with the orchestra this summer--gold medalist Jon Nakamatsu is yet to come--Kasman’s style glimmers with the best of Russian schooling: the unabashed caressing of a line, the tempo liberties that dance around a solid beat, the virile technique and voluptuous sound (made overbearing here by zealous sound engineering).

But the Van Cliburn silver medalist is an individualist and a solid ensemble musician too. A slight figure, often hunched over the keyboard, he communicated a trance-like focus and assertive poetic lyricism that played with--and played off--conductor Carl St.Clair’s stricter adherence to classical proportions.

St.Clair ran a tight ship--neatly balanced, sectionally tidy--with plenty of room for appealing orchestral solos to emerge. Hornists James Taylor and Russell Dicey conquered the outdoors and the sound system in lush passages and sensitive dovetailing.

Some of the efforts, however, were thwarted by the amplification, which began with a disturbing delay and, throughout the work, threw balance to the pianist, even when he should have been accompanying other instrumentalists.

St.Clair introduced the concerto with a muscular reading of Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture, Opus 84, and fleshed out the program with big brassy pieces--Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Procession of the Nobles,” from “Mlada,” and the first of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” marches, Opus 39.

Handel’s Concerto Grosso No.26, “Royal Fireworks Music,” was made even more outdoorsy in an arrangement for full orchestra--tuba and all--by Charles Mackerras.

Trumpets got to show off further in Clarke’s “The Prince of Denmark’s March,” formerly known as Purcell’s “Trumpet Voluntary,” but few of the more than 7,750 reportedly in attendance would have heard them over the fireworks.