Pasadena Symphony and Shelley ace Rachmaninoff

Given the central position of Rachmaninoff in the piano repertoire, it’s a bit surprising how few pianists have recorded all of his piano music; you can count them on one hand. The British pianist Howard Shelley is one of those who have done it, which puts him one up on the big names usually associated with Rachmaninoff -- including Horowitz, Ashkenazy, Van Cliburn, and the composer himself -- who have not.

Shelley has been a fairly frequent collaborator over the years with his maestro friend at the Pasadena Symphony, Jorge Mester, and he returned to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday night to take on the Big Daddy of the Rachmaninoff concerto cycle, the Piano Concerto No. 3.

Normally, this notoriously difficult concerto brings out the barnstormer in a performer, but Shelley is not a bombs-away type of pianist. Indeed, the dominant partner in this collaboration seemed to be Mester, who shaped the orchestral phrases in more voluptuously moving, yet never overly sentimental ways than Shelley could in his solo passages. Moreover, the balances very often tipped way toward the Pasadena Symphony, even in passages where the pianist is supposed to be pounding the notes out triple fortissimo.

Technically, though, everything was comfortably under Shelley’s fingers; he didn’t let the piece’s structure drift, and he could make music with the more introspective passages. On this occasion, Shelley didn’t feel the need to tackle the composer’s more bombastic alternate first movement cadenza, a seemingly de rigueur macho choice these days; the main cadenza suited him just fine.

The concert started on a wobbly note with some surprisingly poor ensemble work in the opening of Dvorak’s Scherzo Capriccioso. But Mester soon pulled it together, settling in with an appealing lilt and whipping up the blazing Presto coda. The 1919 edition of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Suite also revealed some scrappy string work, particularly in the “Infernal Dance.” But Mester’s masterly sense of shape and ear for colorful detail kept things on track.