Brilliance from Eaglen, Pasadena Symphony

Jorge Mester and the Pasadena Symphony -- a powerhouse team entering their 20th year together -- opened the orchestra’s 77th season Saturday night in Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

Their performance of a Richard Strauss program turned out to be well played, brilliant, sometimes raucous. It began and ended with the bombastic: the heroic and hormonally charged tone poem “Don Juan,” and the final scene from “Salome,” in which celebrated Wagnerian Jane Eaglen was the bright-voiced soloist. In between, Eaglen sang a somewhat timid version of the Four Last Songs, and 13 wind players offered the early Serenade, Opus 7.

High technical accomplishment remains a hallmark of the orchestra’s arsenal of virtues, on display vividly at both ends of this event. More emphasis on subtlety and nuance is needed. The collaboration with the British soprano worked nicely in the Four Last Songs, but soft playing, and the gradations leading to it, still eludes this ensemble, which might take a lesson or two from the striking example of the much younger Pacific Symphony.

In recent seasons, one has heard live performances of the Four Last Songs from singers as different as Jessye Norman and Karita Mattila, both of whom tended to overinterpret these valedictory gems, but expressively. Eaglen approached them with a sluggish spirit, undersang and never seemed to connect to the poetic texts. Bland.

On the other hand, she brought to Salome’s mighty vocal climaxes an enthusiastic brightness and point, and the evening ended in a blaze of musical color. It was a gala occasion.