Symphony Plays Skillfully but Without Special Spark

Guest conductors come in two sizes: impressive and problematic. Fabbio Meccheti, who leads the Pacific Symphony in a Copland/Barber/Tchaikovsky program this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, is of the second kind.

The results he produced Wednesday night in Segerstrom Hall were positive enough: The orchestra played well, not immaculately but confidently and with its usual strengths.

One missed, however, the individuality, confidence and panache that come with a compelling podium personality. Everything went nicely, except the charisma.

To his credit, the 42-year-old Brazilian musician, who holds concurrent leadership posts in Spokane, Wash.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Rio de Janeiro, presided over sensible, logical and unmannered performances of Copland’s “El Salon Mexico,” the Violin Concerto of Samuel Barber and Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” Symphony.

For all its many and striking climaxes, Tchaikovsky’s beloved Sixth Symphony emerged with more regularity than passion. The orchestra showed many of its dynamic resources--though only a portion of its softest playing--and some of its best solo resources--from the horns, led by John Reynolds, and from the woodwinds.

Most disappointingly, the depressive finale, so cleanly executed, did not project or plumb the composer’s depth of feeling. We know this orchestra is capable of producing more.

American violinist Elmar Oliveira was the able soloist in Barber’s 58-year-old Concerto, a work he delivered vividly, in particular the ostensibly rambling opening movement and the rhapsodic Andante. In the finale, both Oliveira and the Pacific Symphony’s upper strings made scratchiness a questionable interpretive point; among other results, what should have been a controlled Presto became a hectic rushing.

A nervous run-through of “El Salon Mexico” began the evening uneventfully.