Fanciful Finale at Pasadena Civic

The Pasadena Symphony season finale, Saturday at the Civic Auditorium, had a little bit of everything, a fanfare, an overture, a symphonic poem-piano concerto (with encore) and a large-scale symphony. And while the program lacked cumulative impact, it did stimulate in its stages.

Music director Jorge Mester opened with a three-minute sparkler, “Encomium” by George Hyde, written in celebration of the orchestra’s 70th season by one of its horn players. Bright, busy and athletic, it splashed colors and ran off.

Without leaving the stage, Mester followed with Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival” Overture, here produced with textural clarity, brash immediacy and timing as precise as a bomb. Just how Berlioz should be.

Spanish pianist Joaquin Achucarro joined the orchestra for Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain,” a hybrid work tilted more toward the orchestra than soloist. At any rate, Achucarro showed discerning skills in tonal shading and incantatory phrasing, as well as an unselfishness in accompanying the orchestra. Mester provided urgent rhythms and shimmers. It was in encore that the pianist made his strongest impression, with a quietly rapturous account of Scriabin’s Nocturne for the Left Hand.

After intermission, conductor and orchestra turned to the familiar strains of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, which they dispatched without undue vulgarity. Always proficient in the pacing of big symphonic works, Mester kept phrasings taut (including in several oft-bombastic climaxes) and pulses steady (even when at leisurely tempos), everywhere avoiding exaggeration. The result was a sane Fifth, though never wanting in intensity.