St.Clair Conducts an Impressive Season Opener

Opening nights are supposed to be gala, festive, uplifting affairs noting another new start, a fresh opportunity for growth and expansion. The latest opening night of the Pacific Symphony, Thursday in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, lived up to such expectations, though the first half of the concert fell short of real thrills.

In the second part, however, Music Director Carl St.Clair and his high-achieving orchestra--this year noting its 20th anniversary--created true excitement with an authoritative, clarified and moving performance of Mahler’s First Symphony, one serving as a reminder of the work’s sometimes undervalued stature.

This re-creation was both intelligently laid out and beautifully executed. The narrative thread of Mahler’s extended canvas kept the listener engrossed in its continuity; the composer’s pressing of musical angst and subsequent release of musical tension emerged in a masterly way, thanks to St.Clair’s inspired overview and bright pacing.

All sections of the Pacific Symphony contributed equally: the highly accomplished violins and violas, the mellow but well-spoken lower strings; woodwinds of pristine, clear-voiced virtuosity; a gorgeously big-toned but never raucous brass choir. With this performance, the ensemble achieved a new plateau of consistent quality.

And its playing did not disappoint in the pre-intermission, devoted to the West Coast premiere of Richard Danielpour’s year-old “Celestial Night” and the revival, in a new musical perspective, of Gershwin’s 74-year-old “Rhapsody in Blue.” Still, neither performance engaged.

“Celestial Night” is a 20-minute orchestral essay in two contrasting movements by the Pacific Symphony’s new composer-in-residence. This single hearing revealed nothing startling about Danielpour’s style, a middle-of-the-road 20th century language that might have spawned a piece like this as long ago as 30 or 50 years. Its main feature seems to be innocuousness.

Marcus Roberts’ quirky reinvention of “Rhapsody in Blue,” impressive in live first hearings hereabout in recent seasons, seems now merely a reordering of Gershwin’s materials into three large, ostensibly improvised solo cadenzas inserted between the work’s orchestral sections.

It can be fascinating and unexpected, but in this acoustical context--a 3,000-seat auditorium usually flattering to the sounds of piano with orchestra--the pianist’s understated noodling, the musical equivalent of mumbling, made a small impression. Roberts played well, and most confidently; his variants on Gershwin are most pleasing. But in this venue, and with this virtuoso orchestra, he seemed a small fish in a large ocean.