Offbeat, but St.Clair Pulls It Off

Carl St.Clair’s yen for idiosyncratic programming and theatrical gestures often leads to silly distractions. Sunday, however, the Pacific Symphony’s music director pulled it off, producing an offbeat but entertaining and highly polished afternoon of Beethoven.

In the first of two all-Beethoven concerts planned for the inaugural season of their chamber orchestra series, St.Clair and a smaller version of his orchestra settled in before an appreciative crowd in the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

A more conventional conductor would have invited a soloist and left it at that, trusting audiences to be attracted by the prospect of pure good music on an intimate scale. St.Clair, however, invited two soloists--pianist Norman Krieger and the orchestra’s concertmaster, Raymond Kobler--and threw in a chorus as well.

Then, apparently feeling this program was still not lively enough, he added at the last minute a species of performer I’ve never seen before, an emcee of sorts, to interject spoken commentary along the way.

Almost anyone he could have chosen for this job would have been annoying. But KUSC-FM classical disc jockey and musical Renaissance man Alan Chapman was so witty and smooth that only the most severe purist would complain. He offered intelligent and entertaining observations about the music and then left the stage to let the musicians do their work.

Apart from the unusual stage business, it was a novel and satisfying program. Each half started with a mini-concerto (Beethoven’s Romance No. 1 and No. 2, respectively) for violin and orchestra. Completing the bill was the composer’s electrifying Symphony No. 1, a lively tidbit of theater music, and the relatively unfamiliar but highly worthy Choral Fantasy.

Kobler was, as always, authoritatively musical as soloist. His intonation and phrasing are as close to faultless as we could hope. His sound is saturated with tone, never scratchy or percussive.

His performance was marred, unfortunately, by a distracting habit. Not to put too fine a point on it, Kobler breathes heavily through his nose as he plays. This sound, quite audible even at the back of the hall, was especially bothersome in the first romance.

The performance of Beethoven’s first symphony was first-rate. From the perfectly-in-tune sforzando chords in the winds that open the first movement to rigorously clean and articulate sixteenth-note runs for the violins in the last, it was a polished, energetic and muscular performance, a joy to hear.

The John Alexander Singers--core members of the Pacific Chorale--joined the orchestra for the final two works, including a lively march and chorus from incidental music for a long-forgotten play called “The Ruins of Athens” and the Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra, Opus 80.

The theater music excerpt, more flash than substance, was too short to give us much sense of the work from which it was drawn. The Choral Fantasy was far more satisfying.

Soloist Krieger played with a measured energy and crisp articulation, turning out clean trills and forceful chords without losing momentum or disrupting phrases. Sopranos were sharp in the final passages, but otherwise it was a stirring reading of a work that should be better known.