Pacific Symphony’s future music director returns with a heavy dose of Beethoven

Dun, dun, dun, DUN!

The opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are iconic, but Alexander Shelley promises that the piece has much more in store.

The next artistic and music director of the Pacific Symphony returns to Costa Mesa next week, conducting the symphony for the first time since he was named as Carl St. Clair’s successor last November.

Shelley will lead three shows beginning Thursday night at Segerstrom Concert Hall, featuring Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as well as his Piano Concerto No. 5, which is also known as the “Emperor” concerto.

Shelley is set to serve as music director designate in 2025-26, before taking full leadership the following year.

“I’m so excited,” Shelley said in a Zoom interview this week from London before flying to California. “We don’t need analogies or metaphors, but if you’re taking over a great sports team as coach or manager, I feel like that. I just can’t wait to get to know the players closer, to start working with them and dig into music. And with that, to build a relationship with the audience.”

Next week’s concert will open with Chinese American composer Tan Dun’s “Jubilation” from his symphony Heaven Earth Mankind, composed to celebrate Hong Kong’s 1997 return from rule under the United Kingdom to China. The performance will include the Southern California Children’s Chorus, which holds rehearsals at nearby Mater Dei High School, as well as the orchestra.

“Singing this music that includes Beethoven but is also of our time, that feels like a microcosm of how I want it to feel in the auditorium moving forward,” said Shelley, 45, who is currently the music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada. “I think it already does. It feels like a community space that belongs to everybody, but it’s intended as a sign that I very much want that to continue. Having those kids there who are the future and are from our community, that’s an important thing for me.”

Members of the Pacific Symphony perform after Alexander Shelley was named the next music and artistic director last November.

(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)

The “Emperor” concerto will follow, before the intermission, showcasing concert pianist George Li, an American who at 29 has already long been known as a gifted international performer.

“I’m so thrilled to be performing Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ concerto in Orange County next week!” Li said in an email interview. “What I love about the piece is the balance between expression, form and utmost grandeur that permeates throughout. The piece is filled with scales and arpeggios, but the listener never feels like they are pure exercises. Each iteration is filled with dramatic purpose and intention, building in momentum and phrasing. It is a piece filled with joy and brightness, and I can’t wait to perform it soon.”

The concert continues with Iranian Canadian composer Iman Habibi’s “Jeder Baum spricht,” German for “Every Tree Speaks,” a reflection on environmental challenges. It then concludes with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Shelley said he would compare the Fifth Symphony to visiting places like Machu Picchu or the Sistine Chapel. He added that Beethoven was the first to start a symphony in a minor key, which sounds sad and dark, and end in a major key.

“Traditionally, they used to say, this is a sad symphony and we’re going to have a sad experience,” Shelley said. “Or, this is a happy symphony and we’re going to have a happy experience. He said, ‘I believe so fervently in the transformative power of human nature, that we can hope and we can obtain and we can aim for transformation spiritually and emotionally.’ He depicted that struggle in music, and it resonated through history.”

Shelley said he has conducted the Fifth Symphony many times in many places, but still finds it very exciting to perform.

“I think it’s because I have a relationship with it that is about that transformative power,” he said. “Other people might think it’s majestic or dignified, like a museum piece, and they’ll have their own relationship. To me, it’s really vibrant and very human and alive.”

The three-date show runs Thursday through Saturday at Segerstrom Concert Hall, with tickets available at pacificsymphony.org. The concert includes a preview talk with KUSC midday host Alan Chapman at 7 p.m.