Review: Stylish Playing at Pasadena Community Orchestra

With its 28th season well underway the Pasadena Community Orchestra, led by conductor Alan Reinecke, presented its second of four formal concerts (and a patriotic concert in the park) Friday night at the First Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena, its long-time concert venue.

Reinecke led his talented community musicians in a program that drew its music from three distinct eras and was composed by three musical radicals: Bohemia-born Bedrich Smetana, Russian Serge Prokofiev, and Austria's Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The Smetana work "Sarka," from his six-symphonic poem cycle "Ma Vlast" ("My Country"), changed the landscape for musical patriotic depictions in the Romantic era of music. Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 in G-minor, heard here with orchestra member Joyce Pan as soloist, hardly abated the Russian's gift for the avant-garde of the 1930's.

Mozart hurried—due to health, financial, or political reasons, or maybe all of the above—to complete three of his most famous symphonies, his Symphony No. 40 and 41, and the Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major in the turbulent mid-1700's, performed as the final piece of this concert.

In the opening piece, the "Sarka," Reinecke kept the drama of the work intact in a well-paced version. Closing with the Mozart music, the orchestra followed Reinecke's lead to provide good ensemble work, with lively tempos in the third movement. During that movement, clarinetist Emily Denney's playing defined the Austrian's style.

But the treat of the evening was young Joyce Pan in her violin solo work performing the Prokofiev Violin Concerto. The music, which was written in 1935 for violin prodigy Robert Soetens (who died in 1997), is difficult and still maintains its avant-gardish edginess. I suspect that it is this modernism that attracted Pan to the piece, and was probably welcomed by conductor Reinecke as a departure from the standard fare of music his orchestra has traditionally offered.

Pan brings to music years of training with outstanding teachers and a long resumé of youth orchestras and competition awards. In this performance she developed a fine depth of tone and nimble-fingered execution, especially in the second movement. Although the first movement is meant to be introverted, Pan was overly diffident at the start, with the orchestra covering her and making her hard to be heard. Reinecke corrected the balance in the second and final movement, and Pan completed the solo duties with a fiery finish. The orchestra gave dutiful backing to Pan, but seemed clearly more comfortable with the Mozart work, which closed the program.

The Pasadena Community Orchestra continues its concert season at the First Church of the Nazarene on Friday, March 30 with orchestra member (and Board member) Donald Fisher who will perform Carl Maria von Weber's Bassoon Concerto.  Admission to these concerts is free.