Pasadena Symphony Attempts Creation of New World
Linda Wang
MUSIC REVIEW
The 2008-2009 season for the Pasadena Symphony is over. After a series of difficult moves that occurred throughout the October to May concerts that included staff lay-offs, cancelled concerts and pleas for money, there is perhaps a glimmer of hope for the future of the financially stressed orchestra. With Executive Director Tom O’Connor moving over to the California Philharmonic Orchestra and Paul Ian Zdunek appointed as CEO and close to a dozen staff members let go in a move to downsize, followed by a name change from the flabbergasting Orchestras of Pasadena (or Oops!) to its venerable name, the Pasadena Symphony Association, the organization has embarked on the creation of a new world, no less. That was the given theme of the orchestra’s final season concert last Saturday at the Pasadena Civic, “A New World”.
Like all creations, things got off to a slightly rocky start in a version of Darius Milhaud’s “La Creation du Monde” (The Creation of the World) that was at once chaotic and finally, beautiful. The 86 year-old piece is still seen by many as an example of outlandish new music. Byron Adams, who provides many of the pre-concert lectures in the series called “Insights” for the Symphony Association, privately admitted that anything by Milhaud is not to his liking, although he was impressed with the playing and the balance the small orchestra (as called for in the score) was able to achieve under Pasadena Symphony’s long-time conductor, Jorge Mester. Adams is a composer-educator with some 30 years experience, so I am on shaky ground in criticizing the version I heard. I thought it under-rehearsed and far too delicate, or maybe overly diffident, given the jazzy thematic music and sections of the music named by Milhaud with such names as “The Chaos before Creation”. That is not to say that the quieter passages in the six-part 20-minute ballet music were not awesome. They were, and oboist David Weiss was sensational.
The centerpiece of the concert was the impressive playing of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E-minor played by guest-artist Linda Wang. Ms. Wang has top credentials having studied under Julliard School’s Dorothy DeLay and locally with Alice Schoenfeld. Her own career is dappled with a host of successful appearances with orchestras around the world and as a teacher at University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. Her training and her experience was in full force as she maneuvered skillfully between the difficult passages and landing squarely in full tone in the second movement “Andante”. As to the new world, this violin masterpiece is considered by many to be the composition that established the Romantic period. Wang seemed driven to convey that content with her interpretation which was neither dated nor syrupy. Mester led the orchestra with mellow strings (with Assistant Concertmaster Amy Hershberger capably at the helm for this concert) unusually strong bass playing, and beautiful brass and woodwinds—most notably Joel Timm’s English horn. There were minor infractions in phrasing between Mester and Wang, but they were just that, minor.
The audience exploded in applause and shouts at the conclusion. Loyal concert attendee and music aficionado, Gloria Koeppel, of Arcadia, remarked that her playing “actually sings”, she said, also noting the beautiful tone Wang achieved from her 1767 J. B. Guadagnini violin.
The concluding number in the concert, Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”) also related to THE new world as seen by the Czechoslovakian composer. Although it was his paean to America, it is clearly a musical postcard “From” the new world as seen through his European eyes. Mester used his considerable conducting talent to offer a swift, upbeat and fresh interpretation to this well-known composition.
An auction followed the concert in the Civic Auditorium’s Gold Room. Concert patrons filled the room and Youth Orchestra conductor Jack Taylor’s jazz team entertained, as they had before the concert outside in the plaza, as a promo for their Spring concert to be held May 5 at Pasadena High School. Auctioned off were two vacation opportunities and a painting. The painting, “The Pools Above Sturtevant Falls” by Peter Adams, brought a winning bid of $13,000. A Tuscany vacation villa went for $1,500 and a New Zealand visit for $2,100. Several bidders expressed interest in securing additional vacation packages at the winning bid price, making the event successful for the Pasadena Symphony Association.
Under Zdunek the Association is, indeed, creating a new world for classical music in the San Gabriel Valley.
By Bill Peters
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