Decade Makes Its Mark on Pacific Symphony

There have been larger, more ambitious, more ceremonial pieces of music written than Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But when the occasion is an especially important one, solemn or celebratory, when the need to instill a genuine sense of hope and promise is crucial, the Ninth is the inevitable choice.

The wall in Berlin falls, and Bernstein is right there with the Ninth. Earlier this month, Simon Rattle conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the Ninth on the site of the former concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria, in an effort by that politically troubled country to come to terms with its past. In Japan, the Ninth is a New Year’s ritual. Last summer at the Hollywood Bowl, the World Festival of Sacred Music spent a day surveying the globe’s spiritual music, but culminated with the Ninth. Can you guess what symphony Esa-Pekka Salonen will use to mark his return, after a year’s sabbatical, to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the fall?

And so Beethoven’s Ninth it was Wednesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center to mark the end of Carl St.Clair’s 10th season as music director of the Pacific Symphony.

St.Clair came to Orange County as a young conductor with Leonard Bernstein’s patronage as his strongest calling card. The Pacific Symphony, only a dozen years old at the time, had just moved from a high school auditorium to the new Segerstrom Hall. Ambition was high, and conductor and orchestra were ready to grow. Wednesday night was a time to measure maturity.

To put a personal stamp on the evening, St.Clair opened with late Bernstein, his “Benediction,” in a revision for baritone and orchestra that the composer made in 1989 shortly before his death. And St.Clair followed that with Richard Danielpour’s “First Light.” In 1988 Bernstein had brought three young composers and conductors together, Danielpour and St.Clair among them, and Danielpour is now the Pacific Symphony’s composer in residence.

Speaking briefly to the audience, Danielpour noted that something stronger tied the program together, that all three works were, in a sense, benedictions. Bernstein’s short score sets a Hebrew prayer for baritone and orchestra. Danielpour was inspired by a Robert Duncan poem and ends his 13-minute piece with a series of alleluias. And Beethoven famously ends his symphony with a setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” for chorus and four vocal soloists, which is not exactly a benediction but is at least an ecstatic call for brotherhood that some conductors interpret with spiritual ardor.

But the evening’s impression was more a show of spectacle than soul. Bernstein’s prayer was warmly sung by Kyle Ketelsen, a young baritone who won third place in the Loren L. Zachery Society National Vocal Competition at the Wilshire Ebell Theater on Sunday. But this is Bernstein, at the end of his life, with one last chance to seduce God, and St.Clair doted on its sentiment.

Danielpour may arrive at alleluias in “First Light,” but it is the getting there with a splash of rhythmic enthusiasm that gives the score its bright character, and that is where attention was focused on this occasion as the orchestra labored, perky but not quite secure, in the many metric shifts.

St.Clair led the Beethoven without a score with what seemed to be as much momentum as he could muster. And since he is a lively conductor, he managed to muster quite a bit. The rhythmic impulse was particularly strong and imaginative; there was a modern sense to the performance of Beethoven, as if playing off Danielpour’s chimerical meters.

The Pacific Symphony has developed notably in the richness of its sound and power under St.Clair. It is now an orchestra that can play fast and together, and St.Clair had it doing quite a bit of that. The strings sounded beautiful in the magisterial Adagio. The brass was loud and dramatic, even when that wasn’t necessary.

Besides Ketelsen, the other singers were Carmen Pelton, Emily Lodine and Michael Hendrick; the large Pacific Chorale supplied the chorus. And all sounded thrilled to succumb to St.Clair’s sunny and optimistic drive.