In St.Clair’s grip, a dramatic, heroic ‘Heldenleben’

Last year, the Vienna Philharmonic released a flawlessly beautiful recording of Strauss’ epic tone poem “Ein Heldenleben” (A Hero’s Life) conducted by Christian Thielemann. So complacently luxuriant is this performance that you would never know, from listening to the CD, that sexual and scientific revolutions occurred in Vienna shortly after this music was written in 1898 or that wars destroyed a cozy way of life.

Earlier this year, the Berlin Philharmonic put out a shockingly robust “Heldenleben,” Simon Rattle’s probing interpretation questioning the meaning of German heroism.

Wednesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Carl St.Clair led the Pacific Symphony in a “Heldenleben” made bright, raw and energetic.

Suddenly Strauss’ tone poem became the heroic score every Hollywood film composer dreams of writing.

What, one wondered, might old Europe make of this? Soon the orchestra will find out, since it is bound for Germany, Austria and Switzerland later this month on its first overseas tour. St.Clair is not so bold as to take this particular coal to such Newcastles as Strauss’ Munich and Vienna. In those music capitals, he will play it safe with excerpts from “Porgy and Bess.” But a Costa Mesa “Heldenleben” will reach the German cities of Hanover and Cologne.

In the Pacific Symphony’s favor will be exoticism. Tex-Mex is popular in Germany, and so is this conductor from Texas. St.Clair spent six years as principal guest conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony and now heads both an opera company and an orchestra in Weimar along with continuing as music director of the Pacific Symphony.

The first half of Wednesday’s program -- also tour repertory -- began with Zhou Long’s deftly scored and overtly exotic “Two Poems From T’ang” and an introspective, profoundly moving performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with Lynn Harrell as the soloist. The Shostakovich piece proved maybe even more unexpected and unusual than the impetuous “Heldenleben.”

Harrell is also a Texan, in that he lives in Houston. But the native New Yorker who taught at USC before moving to Rice University is known simply as an intense, satisfyingly universal musician.

Shostakovich’s concerto, written in 1959, drips with manic anger and excessive angst, as nearly all the Russian composer’s music did at the time. Yet Harrell has found something deeper in it. His playing didn’t shirk ferocity, but that was a last resort. Instead, his elegiac approach took a step back from Shostakovichian rage and resentment, went beyond mourning, to find, even in the horrors of the Soviet age, places of beauty. It was an eloquent meditation on rising above political oppression and retaining humanity.

Zhou’s piece, rapturously evoking effervescent bells and drunken poets, was one of the hits of the Pacific Symphony’s annual American Composers Festival two years ago. It includes a quartet with two Chinese instruments and violin and cello (the soloists were Min Xiao-Fen, pipa; Xu Ke, erhu; Raymond Kobler, violin; Timothy Landauer, cello) and is music half Western and half Chinese, bursting with color.

I’m sorry the Pacific Symphony won’t take more pieces from these festivals. Do even five people in Vienna, let alone Essen, know Colin McPhee’s irresistible Nocturne? But at least the “Heldenleben” comes off nearly American.

With its Strauss, the Pacific Symphony can’t expect to wow audiences who’ve heard the smoothest orchestras Europe has to offer. But St.Clair dives into “Heldenleben” headlong with such straightforward conviction that he wins half the battle. Strauss in this score has some passages in which he challenges his critics -- who are given nasty little figures in the winds. They didn’t sound so nasty Wednesday, which I take as a sign that St.Clair is already disarming any detractors.

Still, the playing could use a touch more cream, especially in Kobler’s violin solos. But St.Clair is no Thielemann, stopping to lovingly smell every rose. He fearlessly, exuberantly throws himself to the lions and survives to entertain everyone with the story.

Bon voyage, Pacific Symphony.