Music Review : St.Clair’s Back, With Joyous Sounds : Pacific Symphony Orchestra Does Justice to John Williams and Scottish Work by Davies

An enthusiastic crowd packed the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Saturday night to hear the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, led by Carl St.Clair, perform a lively mix of music by composer John Williams, including his most famous film scores and the fanfare he wrote for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

St.Clair, who was making his first Orange County appearance since the death of his son last month, leaned into the music, seeking to draw the utmost from each instrument in the orchestra.

St.Clair said Williams, a friend who introduced him to the Pacific Symphony in 1989 when he was an assistant conductor under Williams at the Boston Pops Orchestra, captures the deepest of human emotions in his music.

Despite a few ragged edges at the opening, the orchestra seized the larger-than-life mood, painting with gusto and led by St.Clair in long, sweeping lines and urgent, determined rhythms, bolstered by bravado from the brass and percussion sections.

The first half of the program concluded with “An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise” by British composer Peter Maxwell Davies, which was commissioned by Williams for the Boston Pops in 1985. It is a piece that captures the sounds of the Scottish isles and the progression of a wedding from its most stately to the whimsical, sometimes dissonant, notes of a party turned tipsy in the wee hours of the night.

It benefited from attractive woodwind solos, jaunty highland rhythms and tipsy syncopations culminating in the striking entrance of bagpiper Nancy Tunnicliffe and followed by a show of traditional piping from the Cabar Feidh Pipe Band.

The only interruption to the happy world of fantasy came in the second half of the program with the sorrowful theme to “Schindler’s List.” First violinist Paul Manaster stepped forward to offer a simple, straightforward account, a reading that assumed even more poignancy under the circumstances.

From St.Clair’s first hesitant moments beginning the Olympic Fanfare, to the rousing “Star Wars” finale with fireworks, he seemed to take both solace and joy in the musical evening, which was dedicated to the memory of his 18-month-old son, Cole Carsan St.Clair.

It was a mixture of grief and affirmation of life and love that filled the bowl under moonlit skies. There also was an overwhelming sense of a new family being born as the deafening claps and cheers of the 9,615 patrons embraced St.Clair and the orchestra.

* Pacific Symphony Orchestra presents a “Tchaikovsky Spectacular,” conducted by Barry Jekowsky and featuring pianist Ilya Itin, on Sept. 18 at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8808 Irvine Center Drive. 8 p.m. $14-$57. (714) 755-5799.