Korngold Concerto Is Concertmaster’s Dish

Yes, Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote wonderful film scores. No, Korngold’s Violin Concerto is not merely warmed-over movie music.

Soloist Raymond Kobler proved that when he played an expansive, melancholic but otherwise unsentimental performance of the piece on a four-part program by the Pacific Symphony led by Carl St.Clair on Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Concertmaster of the Pacific since May 1999 (before that, concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony for 18 years), Kobler connected the work with Korngold’s long-lined melodic genius, which had had major composers singing his praises even when he was a teenager, and which later elevated Hollywood’s sound world to new heights.

Kobler didn’t try to wrestle or subdue the music, or misguidedly turn it into a vehicle for showoff virtuosity. Even in the knockabout finale, he remained reserved, a bright thread in a rich orchestral fabric.

St.Clair did one of the things he does best, which was to accompany diligently. That compensated for a second half that grew increasingly dispiriting.

He led a brisk but joyless account of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 and conducted two works by Johann Strauss Jr. in a way apparently meant to prove that the Waltz King had no finesse whatsoever--”Voices of Spring” and the “Egyptian” March. An audience clap-along performance of the “Radetzky” March by Johann Sr. was offered as an encore.

St.Clair opened the concert with a confident performance of Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, which the Pacific last played in 1982. He then immediately repeated it, ostensibly as a tribute to one of the players, violist Robert Becker, but perhaps also to help educate the audience, which had been restive the first time around.

The players sounded even more confident on the repeat.