Music : Pacific Symphony Reaches Out in Concert

Old-timers will tell you Santa Ana isn’t what it was. They are probably talking about the Santa Ana of 1935-1945, when the then-elegant, Midwest-style Seat of Orange County was still surrounded by citrus groves--not about the seedy, run-down city of 20 years ago.

Today, the county seat has been re-beautified and handsomely cleaned up, as a visit to a Pacific Symphony Hispanic Outreach event at Santa Ana High School--close by the town center--on Friday night attested. And the old High School Auditorium, always an acoustical haven, remains a happy and comfortable hall for music.

For the third and final Outreach concert of the season, the Pacific orchestra was conducted, not by its usual leader at these events, outgoing assistant conductor Lucas Richman, but by Carl St. Clair, music director of the Symphony since the fall.

St. Clair not only led a consistently spirited, if regularly scrappy, performance devoted to music by Glinka, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel, Bizet and Bernstein but he also spoke in acceptable Spanish to the large, hall-filling audience, welcoming them to the event and speaking briefly about the music at hand.

Unfortunately, he was not the only speaker. Self-congratulations--mostly in Spanish--came from several sources before a note of music was heard, the most irritating speaker being a politician who couldn’t resist boasting of his humble beginnings--in Cypress.

Most articulate among the music-makers was Gustavo Romero, the young, Juilliard-trained American musician who first played with this orchestra at a pops event--he opened for Vicki Carr--in March.

Judging from Romero’s commanding, powerful and faceted performance of the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, he deserves a ghetto-less appearance on the ensemble’s regular subscription season. Brahms, anyone?

Despite noisy distractions--a talking baby should not be tolerated at any concert at any time--Romero reconstructed the Romantic elegance and the virtuoso display of the familiar piece expertly. St. Clair and the orchestra proved, again, willing and sensitive collaborators.

The other standout performance was St. Clair’s big and blowzy but well-paced reading of “Caprice Espagnole,” which featured strong soloism from several principals, and as healthy and clear a forte as this orchestra ever produces. Is it the room, or is it the conductor?