35 years on, Pacific Symphony is stronger than ever with Carl St.Clair at the helm
/By Truman C. Wang
9/30/2024
Photo credit: Doug Gifford
pianist claire huangci
Last Thursday, September 26, the Orange County’s Pacific Symphony opened its 2024/25 season. It’s been 35 years since Carl St.Clair became the orchestra’s Music Director (and 46 years since the orchestra’s founding). Instead of going stale, the symphony’s seasons, especially in the last 10 years with the addition of concert operas, went from strength to strength, showing no sign of artistic and financial crises that afflict many U.S. orchestras.
To celebrate this occasion, the opening week’s program replicated that of the first concert conducted by maestro St.Clair 35 years ago: Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso tested the orchestra’s ability to play with utter precision and rich colors; it was masterfully played by the musicians and dynamically conducted by St.Clair (whose exuberant podium manner recalls that of his mentor Leonard Bernstein.) Claire Huangci was the pianist for Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Her virtuoso playing showed tremendous youthful enthusiasm and energy, at the same time engaging in subtle dialog with the orchestra; her handling of the ‘Dies irae’ chant, first hidden in the inner voices before making its crushing final appearance, was brilliantly exciting. Beethoven Symphony No. 7 received a tense, propulsive and, in the allegretto, highly eloquent, account from maestro St.Clair, with memorable horn and flute solo turns. It was a big, old-school, Romantic performance , with strong emphases, violent contrasts, and very expressive phrasing. Frank Ticheli’s Shooting Stars was originally written for St.Clair’s 25th anniversary. It’s a festive concert opener, full of lively, cascading notes and bursts of colors from all sections of the orchestra. One hopes the Pacific Symphony is not a meteoric ‘shooting star’, but a permanent shining star in the constellation of fine symphony orchestras.
The 2024/25 season line-up looks to be a crowd pleaser, with award-winning soloists and choral masterpieces (Carmina Burana, Verdi’s Requiem), as well as the opera Das Rheingold, which I hope will be the first installment of a complete Ring cycle.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.