There have been larger, more ambitious, more ceremonial pieces of music written than Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. But when the occasion is an especially important one, solemn or celebratory, when the need to instill a genuine sense of hope and promise is crucial, the Ninth is the inevitable choice.
The wall in Berlin falls, and Bernstein is right there with the Ninth. Earlier this month, Simon Rattle conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the Ninth on the site of the former concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria, in an effort by that politically troubled country to come to terms with its past. In Japan, the Ninth is a New Year's ritual. Last summer at the Hollywood Bowl, the World Festival of Sacred Music spent a day surveying the globe's spiritual music, but culminated with the Ninth. Can you guess what symphony Esa-Pekka Salonen will use to mark his return, after a year's sabbatical, to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the fall?
And so Beethoven's Ninth it was Wednesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center to mark the end of Carl St.Clair's 10th season as music director of the Pacific Symphony.
St.Clair came to Orange County as a young conductor with Leonard Bernstein's patronage as his strongest calling card. The Pacific Symphony, only a dozen years old at the time, had just moved from a high school auditorium to the new Segerstrom Hall. Ambition was high, and conductor and orchestra were ready to grow. Wednesday night was a time to measure maturity.
To put a personal stamp on the evening, St.Clair opened with late Bernstein, his "Benediction," in a revision for baritone and orchestra that the composer made in 1989 shortly before his death. And St.Clair followed that with Richard Danielpour's "First Light." In 1988 Bernstein had brought three young composers and conductors together, Danielpour and St.Clair among them, and Danielpour is now the Pacific Symphony's composer in residence.
Speaking briefly to the audience, Danielpour noted that something stronger tied the program together, that all three works were, in a sense, benedictions. Bernstein's short score sets a Hebrew prayer for baritone and orchestra. Danielpour was inspired by a Robert Duncan poem and ends his 13-minute piece with a series of alleluias. And Beethoven famously ends his symphony with a setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy" for chorus and four vocal soloists, which is not exactly a benediction but is at least an ecstatic call for brotherhood that some conductors interpret with spiritual ardor.
