Shakespeare May Be ‘In Love’ but Symphony’s Lacking in Passion

“Sing, and dance it trippingly,” says Oberon at the end of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” as he commands his fairy host to sweep through Theseus’ palace and bless the three newly united couples sleeping there.

Would that conductor Carl St.Clair, the Pacific Symphony and the other forces in the “Shakespeare, In Love” concert Thursday at Costa Mesa’s Orange County Performing Arts Center had taken Oberon’s advice to heart.

Indeed, this and other lessons in musicality were delivered superlatively by South Coast Repertory actors Nike Doukas and Mark Harelik, as they took on various roles (Puck, Titania and Oberon) in a performance of Mendelssohn’s complete incidental music to the play.

Though they spoke their lines standing at miked podiums on each side of the conductor, their visionary intensity and vivid delivery transported the audience to a magical stage space. David Emmes, the repertory company’s producing artistic director, was their director.

The performance soared with every speech delivered and sank with every purely musical section. Admittedly, those skittering quick gossamer string passages in the Overture must be a bear to get in sync, and the Pacific strings didn’t quite succeed at that. But what was the problem in those haunting woodwind chords with which an inspired 17-year-old Mendelssohn summoned up an entire elfin kingdom? They fell so flat here.

Why was the Nocturne so leaden? Ditto the Wedding March? Why was the music even of the Mechanicals so dry and heavy-handed? It was perplexing.

The women of the Pacific Chorale sounded distant and muted. Korliss Uecker and Elizabeth Shammash were the dutiful soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, respectively.

The concert opened with music Shakespeare might have heard, as filtered through 20th century sensibilities: the Courtly Dances from Britten’s opera “Gloriana,” composed to honor the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Here, St.Clair and the orchestra succeeded in capturing Britten’s deft orchestration. They were less successful in reveling in Britten’s complex rhythms.

Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” Overture-Fantasy served as a rather joyless midpoint of the program. Already drained of passion from the opening measures (looking back from the tragedy rather than prefiguring it, perhaps?), the work progressed without tension and drama.

St.Clair might have been attempting to model the later Karajan viscous style of continuous, gorgeous sound, but the orchestra couldn’t summon the necessary tonal resources to sustain interest in that controversial approach. The final passages of conflict before the epilogue sounded so disjunct one had to wonder if the musicians could hear themselves.

Maybe the orchestra sounded more unified and better integrated from a seat in the higher reaches of the house. Maybe the players were getting used to their new rotary trumpets. Lots of maybes.

But the performance raised the question whether Tchaikovsky is a sure thing. The answer is, apparently not.