Pasadena Symphony Focuses on Franck

Franck’s Symphony in D minor is not a work that plays itself. It needs coaxing, constant attention and a sensitivity to nuance.

All of that it received from conductor Jorge Mester and the Pasadena Symphony on a three-part program Saturday at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. The concert opened the orchestra’s 69th season.

Mester appeared more engaged in this work than in anything else on the program. He captured its brooding mystery and exultant power, presiding over a dynamic and electric interpretation.

Electricity was exactly what was lacking in the performance of Samuel Barber’s Second Essay for Orchestra, which opened the program. The composer’s sprawling, would-be epic rhetoric, well, sprawled and unfolded without much forward thrust.

As the soloist in Grieg’s once-perennial and very worthy Piano Concerto in A minor, at the midpoint of the program, Jorge Federico Osorio capitalized on attractive pastel tones. But otherwise he and Mester delivered a mellow and leisurely interpretation that hardly explored the work’s tensions, variety of moods or beauties of orchestration.

Principal horn James Thatcher and principal flute Louise Ditullio, on the other hand, gave object lessons in the art of romantic playing. Joel Timm was the reliable English horn soloist in the Franck symphony.

Maybe most of the rehearsal time had gone to Franck. It sounded that way.