Pacific’s Season Finishes With Some Big Bangs

No question about it--those open-air summer pops concerts can be a challenge. Babies squall. Insects and airplanes buzz. Tipsy picnickers applaud at random. Society types get onstage and blather.

And then they start firing cannons.

Yet the Pacific Symphony’s final 2001 summer concert at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine on Saturday offered a nice illustration that good musicians, given half a chance, can overcome almost anything to provide a satisfying performance.

It was an all-Tchaikovsky program made up mostly of his greatest hits, bits of this and that culminating in the obligatory 1812 Overture with cannons and fireworks.

Guest conductor Dmitri Liss gamely urged us to think of three ballet waltzes grouped together on the second half of the program as a “little symphony,” but they were still unrelated works with no logical reason--apart from crowd appeal--for being plucked from their respective scores.

Liss is not well known here, but he was an energetic and likable leader. He conducts with sweeping gestures--drawing big circles in the air and throwing his baton hand toward the orchestra--that convey spirit, if not a clear sense of the beat.

He must have been communicating with the musicians all the same. They launched flawlessly into the first work on the program, “Dance of the Tumblers,” from incidental music for a play called “The Snow Maiden.” Despite a rapid tempo and tricky rhythms, they were exactly together.

As unfamiliar as the conductor were the young soloists: Rafal Kwiatkowski, cello, and Karen Gomyo, violin.

Kwiatkowski, who played Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien with the orchestra, has a rather thin tone and was not always perfectly in tune. But his performance was polished and expressive.

Gomyo was more interesting, though her piece, the very slight “Valse-Scherzo,” hardly lasted long enough for us to judge her talent. It would appear she is a sophisticated and passionate player, with energy to spare--someone to watch.

The orchestra was splendid. The violins were warm and lovely in the familiar “Sleeping Beauty” waltz; the brass players, as always, were suave and forceful throughout. As for the cannons, there is not much to say except: They were loud.