Pasadena Community Orchestra audiences usually have a sturdy Episcopal section, and especially these days. Longtime conductor and music director Bethany Pflueger is friends with Saint Mark’s Altadena lay leader Canon Bruce Linsenmayer, twice Kathy’s and my fellow Holy Land pilgrim, so St. Mark’s was well represented last night at First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena, PCO’s home base.
Like many of the musicians, the St. Mark’s members are still dealing with the consequences of homes lost or damaged in the Eaton fire. St. Mark’s also lost its church building and most of its school. Parish and school leaders hope the site will be cleared by September, making it available for services and other events. As a matter of fact, PCO concludes its season on June 7 with its annual Concert in the Park in Sierra Madre. Might a concert al fresco be in St. Mark’s’ future, a rising Phoenix of melody?
For last night’s second half, Bethany had programmed Rachmaninoff’s infinitely melodious Third Piano Concerto with soloist Romain Jansen, winner of the PCO’s annual young artist competition. Romain is a French prodigy who is finishing an undergraduate semester at USC. In a pre-concert colloquy with the conductor, he said he would miss the U.S.’s wide open spaces and most craved French food when he and his family get home this weekend. Asked how he remembered the famously difficult concerto, Romain said there were three kinds of memory. First, he said, were well-trained fingers after hundreds if not thousands of practices, and second, harmonic memory. Bethany teased him for momentarily forgetting the third.
Romain played beautifully, on a nine-foot concert grand the orchestra said had been made available through the generosity of Steinway & Sons in Pasadena. She also lifted up three high school-age musicians affiliated with the orchestra through its work with the Alliance of Black Orchestral Percussionists. They featured periodically in the Rachmaninoff and also the first half, with its works by Bernstein, Copeland, and John Williams.
