Pacific Symphony Extends Mahler Tradition

For a 20-year old orchestra, the Pacific Symphony has played a lot of Mahler. But until this week it’s performed only up to the Sixth Symphony.

Now only Nos. 7 and 8 remain unperformed (and No. 8 is scheduled to open the Pacific Symphony’s 21st season, in October). No. 9, the composer’s last work, closed the Orange County-based orchestra’s season-ending performances on Wednesday and Thursday.

Without hesitation, one can report that Carl St.Clair’s leadership of the maze-like, apparently sprawling yet ultimately single-minded work proved masterly and undistracted, Wednesday night in Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. A major achievement.

The performance he drew from the orchestra he has now led for nine seasons was stamped with authority, directness and myriad details, all building toward a musical structure of awesome consistency.

In mellow command of his accomplished and attentive instrumental colleagues, St.Clair made this massive superstructure a reasonable, continuous, persuasive experience: every note functioned as an integral part of the unfolding emotional document; every section had a place in the total. That is not always true in performances of this work.

The anguish in the extended opening was realized without becoming intolerable, for all its jarring flirtations with atonality. The subsequent folksiness of the second movement never emerged as overstated or banal; they charmed the listener. Pristine, clarified and immaculate playing by the orchestra in the second movement was truly treasurable.

The kaleidoscopic depths of the Rondo-Burleske were revealed as the heart of the work--running a broad dynamic and emotional gamut and preparing the listener for the cathartic complexities of the expansive, inexorable finale.

The Pacific Symphony has seldom played with a more varied dynamic palette or more numerous emotional nuances. The players’ concentration, inspired by the conducting, could take the breath away.

Which is what happened at the final cadence: A long, contemplative silence followed the moment.

Mahler’s Ninth is not a work chock-full of instrumental solos, but some of those are crucial. One had to admire in particular the contributions of the four principal string players: new concertmaster Raymond Kobler, second violinist Amy Sims, violist Robert Becker and cellist Timothy Landauer.