Pacific Symphony bids adieu

Celebrating itself and 20 productive years in residence at Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, the Pacific Symphony said farewell this week to its longtime home.

In September, the orchestra will move across the street to a new facility, the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. The festive program for these valedictory concerts, Wednesday and Thursday, offered Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony preceded by Schubert’s “Tantum Ergo” and a passel of Schubert songs transcribed for orchestra.

In remarks before Wednesday’s concert, music director Carl St.Clair expressed gratitude to all the orchestra’s benefactors in the last two decades and in particular the Segerstrom family, about two dozen of whom he brought onstage for recognition.

The orchestra and the Pacific Chorale, prepared by its leader, John Alexander, performed the demanding program with appropriate strength and panache, though their rehearsal time must have been strained. The opening movements of the Ninth lacked polish plus the assurance of long familiarity. The instrumentalists dug deeper into Schubert’s haunting choral piece, as did the chorale, which sang splendidly at both ends of a long evening.

The solo quartet in the Beethoven disappointed -- the women vocally thin, the men often coarse and unmodulated. Both soprano Wendy Nielsen and mezzo soprano Jennifer Dudley seem to have light voices of little projection; their sounds were sometimes covered by their colleagues. Tenor Jason Collins and baritone Christian Van Horn produced beefy, generally unsubtle performances.

Dudley was the soloist in the lieder group, singing all five songs using scores where tradition requires memorizing. She made some nice musical points but failed to deliver the charms and depth in this great and familiar material. St.Clair and the orchestra provided attentive support.