Holiday Concert Fires Up Pasadena Pops Season

Most Fourth of July pops concerts are cut to a well-defined pattern, and the Pasadena Pops program Saturday evening was no exception. But it is a still effective pattern, one that filled the central meadow at Descanso Gardens with enthusiastic listeners and gave them a briskly played slate of engaging Americana--plus that inescapable masterpiece of musical patriotism from the other side of the world, Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture.

Guest conductor Jorge Mester--music director of the Pasadena Symphony--rounded up many of the usual favorites. He dusted them off, however, and sent them out with vigor, panache and genial between-numbers banter.

Best were a pair of the Dance Episodes that Copland extracted from his ballet “Rodeo.” The quite capable Pasadena Pops--a strong assemblage, particularly considering the competing efforts all around the area--played with limber grace and clarity, enforced by the exposing amplification.

The brass were a special glory all evening, and demonstrated their mettle immediately in Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” The rest of the orchestra also provided steady, even work, although some of the violins were not prepared to play the high-altitude scampers in the “1812” under close microphones.

The soloist was pianist Bryan Pezzone, hero of the studios, CalArts and much else. His vehicle was a rethought and refreshed “Rhapsody in Blue”--not quite as fiercely reinvented as Marcus Roberts’ iconoclastic version, but not your mellow ‘80s slog either. Pezzone’s sassy bite suggested Prokofiev more than Gershwin at times, but it gave the work a compelling drive and character, long on sophisticated inflection and short on sentiment and glitz.

The rest of the agenda included Richard Rodgers’ “Victory at Sea,” a medley from Bernstein’s “West Side Story” (not the composer’s more challenging Symphonic Dances), a medley of traditional American tunes, Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade” and Leroy Anderson’s “Bugler’s Holiday.” Pops board president-elect Thomas Leddy took the podium for Sousa’s “Washington Post” march.

In encore there was “God Bless America” and more Sousa. The Pasadena Pops has three more concerts this summer in its very attractive venue.