Funny how good it is

Peter Schickele was to have ended his year as composer-in-residence of the Pasadena Symphony with a new viola concerto Saturday at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Instead, he replaced it with the first performance of a newly revised version of his Second Symphony. Asked about the switch at the pre-concert talk, Schickele first tried a bad viola joke. When that didn’t work, he told the surprising truth. He had gotten stuck. The first movement wasn’t working and he hadn’t known what else to do.

This is surprising only because Schickele always makes it sound so easy and usually has better jokes. As P.D.Q. Bach, his comic alter-ego, he can be so hilariously and endlessly clever that one assumes it’s simply a matter of an inspired imagination. But he admitted Saturday that he rarely gets it right the first time and is forever revising. (The viola concerto, now back on track, he promised for a future season.)

The “new” symphony, titled “The Sweet Season” and a celebration of spring, was first given by the St. Paul Chamber last season. On that occasion, it had six movements, but Schickele has removed one, the depiction of a storm, because he said it “let the air out of the symphony’s tires.” He has thankfully added more material to the second movement, surely sensing just how entertaining his wacky updated versions of renaissance dance music could be, replete as they are with clodhopping wood blocks and bleating brass. The revisions continued right up to the morning’s dress rehearsal, he said, taking full advantage of the forbearance of Pasadena Symphony music director Jorge Mester, his old Juilliard school mate and longtime musical crony.

For all Schickele’s perfectionism, “The Sweet Season” is a relatively slight 20-minute score. Schickele has a problem he will probably never overcome. As P.D.Q. Bach, he can be so outrageous that it is hard to ever take him altogether seriously. Fortunately, he doesn’t entirely restrain himself even in his “straight” work, and typically the most enjoyable bits of the symphony are the irreverent ones.

The symphony begins with a lovely, if flamboyant, piccolo solo against a soft drone in the violas. The melodic material comes from what Schickele sang as a kid to call his dog. The middle movement, “Vernal Jukebox,” is a wonderful collage, taking off with a theme from Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony given a Schickele twist, his irresistible trademark technique of extending a familiar quote with a jazzy follow-up.

Schickele’s other hallmark is combining unrelated musics, here Beethoven’s “Pastorale” Symphony and Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” throwing in a bird whistle and duck call for good measure. When not amusing, the symphony is never less than agreeable and excellently crafted -- Schickele’s obsessive contrapuntal cobbling is not for nothing.

Mester changed his program, originally to have included Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel” and Brahms’ Second Symphony. Instead, he began with Milhaud’s “Suite provencale” and concluded with Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben” (A Hero’s Life), works that, like Schickele’s symphony, utilize quotation and are essentially self-portraits. Milhaud’s suite is an exhilarating realization of 18th century themes from his native Provence, bitonally spiced up. Strauss placed himself squarely at the center of his grandiose tone poem, but not without quirky self-parody in his colossal battle with his critics, his lavish love themes fashioned out of querulous violin solos representing his wife, Pauline, and his witty self-satisfied contemplation of his life work.

Favoring textural clarity and rhythmic tightness, Mester is the perfect efficient straight man for Schickele, but those virtues also provided for lean, attentive performances of Milhaud and Strauss. One might have wished for a bit more mirth in the Milhaud, more lushness in the Strauss, but not at the expense of the Pasadena Symphony’s concise playing.

And there was certainly no want for character in the violin solos in “Heldenleben,” expertly played by concertmaster Aimee Kreston. Strauss asks the violinist to represent Pauline as everything from “niggardly” to “hypocritically languishing.” Kreston dared take him at his word.