MUSIC REVIEWS : Mester Both Falters, Succeeds in Pasadena

Pasadena Civic Auditorium has a grand, five-manual pipe organ, which seemed to be the only reason to pair Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra” with Saint-Saens’ Symphony No. 3 in a program Saturday by the Pasadena Symphony led by Jorge Mester.

That and the key of C major are about all the two works have in common, and the program showed Mester and the orchestra at widely opposite degrees of effectiveness.

Strauss’ epic philosophical tone poem, doomed for a while to be inevitably linked to Stanley Kubrick’s 1969 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” emerged as sprawling and without cohesion and purpose. Saint-Saens’ “Organ” Symphony, on other hand, received a tight, purposeful reading, from the tense, alert string opening to the timpani-thumping, full-organ-supported coda. Hector Olivera was the masterly organist.

Mester tried to shape the visionary opening of “Zarathustra” with slight crescendos and a few little hitch pauses in the big cadence. But he had to contend with tentative and--later--unreliable brass playing, lean string tone and imbalances between the organ and the orchestra.

But the big lack was just in failing to give the piece its rightful, surging power and forward direction. Mester invited phrases in as if they were characters with something to say, but then hustled them out before they were finished.

In contrast, he attended to the Saint-Saens symphony with unflagging serious and dramatic purpose, at least in its first section, and unfolded the adagio theme with especial lingering affection. The explosions of rhythmic energy and bright color came later.

The orchestra responded to his direction with a clarity, confidence and precision that had not always been evident in the Strauss tone poem.