On a fantasy tour with Pasadena Symphony

By land and by sea, Jorge Mester and the Pasadena Symphony took the audience on fascinating journeys of the imagination Saturday at Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Peter Schickele’s Symphony No. 1, “Songlines,” was the journey over land, while Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” launched its series of stories on a great depiction of the sea.

Composed in 1995, “Song- lines” is an often wondrous three-movement symphony of ambitious scope. It doesn’t try to tell a specific story, but by weaving folk melodies from North America, Africa, Europe and Asia with original material influenced by Dixieland and other nonclassical music forms, it becomes what the composer calls a “world symphony.”

This eclecticism may be a trademark of melting-pot American composers. But Schickele succeeds where others don’t by making it an intriguing blend. There are a few passages that seem to verge on bombast, but the work is so masterly and engaging that the composer should get the benefit of the doubt. Bassoonists Judith Farmer and Charles Coker were the evocative soloists who opened and closed the middle movement.

A list of the players who contributed to Mester’s magisterial and sumptuous reading of “Scheherazade” must include the whole roster of principals. Certainly concertmaster Aimee Kreston, whose voice spins the tales, stands at the top of the list. But others follow closely, and the playing of the whole orchestra, throughout the evening, was crackerjack.

The program opened with Morton Gould’s “American Symphonette No. 2.” Gould is an odd man out now in American music. His works, like this one, don’t fall into neat categories. They’re not pop enough or classical enough to feel comfortable. Still, the insouciant, soft-shoe middle movement Pavanne is irresistibly charming.