Cal Phil’s Ninth: a big gesture on a small scale

Ambassador Auditorium reopened in December 2004 to a chorus of huzzahs and hopes that maybe, just maybe, the new owner -- the Harvest Moon Church -- would be able to restore the Pasadena hall’s glory days. At the time, the only announced tenant was the California Philharmonic.

A year and a half later, the Cal Philharmonic remains the hall’s only tenant, aside from the church. It’s something, but not anything remotely resembling the 1970s and ‘80s when Horowitz, Von Karajan, Bernstein, Milstein and their friends used to drop by.

Thinking big, the orchestra decided to close its second season at the Ambassador on Friday night with a mighty gesture, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. At first, conductor Victor Vener announced that this would be the first performance of the Ninth in the L.A. area. He was kidding, of course, though it was the first time this orchestra has done the whole thing.

It was certainly the first Ninth that I’ve ever seen with an intermission between the third and fourth movements. That was not a good idea, for it destroyed the continuity leading up to the cataclysmic burst of temper at the beginning of the finale and the ingenious reminiscences of the previous three movements.

Not only that, each movement of the symphony was preceded by commentary from the affable Vener, who in touting the now widely used New Barenreiter edition of the Ninth, said that this performance was thus “not an interpretation, but a realization” of what Beethoven wanted. That’s a clever way of dodging direct comparisons with interpreters of the past, while claiming to be onto something different.

What we got was neutered, small-scale Beethoven with restricted dynamic and expressive ranges and fast, but not radical, tempos; even Vener’s lively, flowing pace for the third movement is fairly commonplace these days. For the first 3 1/2 movements, there was little sign of how feverish, profound, driving, lyrical or exultant this music can be, which ought to come through regardless of which score you’re using.

The finale’s vocal quartet (tenor Jonathan Mack, baritone In Joon Jang, soprano Shana Blake Hill, mezzo-soprano Christina Wilcox) was dominated by Mack; the California Philharmonic Chorale, in its “debut” performance, sounded undernourished. But flickers of excitement finally caught hold in the closing minutes.