United States Various: Benjamin Beilman (violin), Pasadena Symphony / Brent Mitchell (conductor). Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, 25.10.2026. (LV)
Joan Tower – Made in America
Barber – Violin Concerto, Op.14
Encore: Bach – ‘Gavotte en Rondeau’ from Partita No.3 in E major
Brahms – Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op.68
Of the country’s 2400 registered orchestras, roughly 300 are in California and nearly 100 in the greater Los Angeles area. And while the Los Angeles Philharmonic may suck much of the air from the room, classical music in Southern California would be immeasurably poorer without the other organizations.
The Pasadena Symphony made the case forcefully in its season-opening concerts with Benjamin Beilman’s superior performance of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. Playing the 1740 Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ once owned by Eugène Ysaÿe and Isaac Stern, Beilman brought to the work a stunning clarity of vision and ability to project through, even against massed high strings. His broad, colorful dynamic palette, meticulous control of pacing and courage and self-confidence made the music feel newly discovered rather than merely well prepared.
Beilman has thought deeply about what it means to perform. In a conversation several years ago, he quoted to me Stern’s belief that a musician needs both the humility to recognize something much greater than oneself and the vanity – or ego – to believe one has something worth bringing to it. That productive tension was audible throughout the concerto: Beilman did not treat the solo part as a display case for virtuosity, though he has virtuosity to spare. He made it a living argument, alert to Barber’s lyricism and its shadows and willing to press toward emotional extremes.
The finale was especially electrifying. Beilman had jokingly threatened in rehearsal to take it even faster than the orchestra had practiced, and there was a palpable alertness in the players as they followed him through the perilous perpetual motion. It was not recklessness: the line remained clean and purposeful. The orchestra, conductor and soloist were listening to one another, but the center of gravity was unmistakably Beilman’s exceptional playing, and they hung together. As a reward for the audience’s cheers and warm applause, Beilman played the ‘Gavotte en rondeau’ from Bach’s E major Partita intimately and adorned by charming curlicues and other slight flights of fancy.
The program began with Joan Tower’s Made in America, an obvious choice for an America 250 season opener. Written in a more innocent political moment, the work’s disturbances can feel almost quaint against the anxieties surrounding the present election season. Yet Tower’s energetic transformation of ‘America the Beautiful’ still carries a punch. The Pasadena players gave it the professional enthusiasm it demands and the audience supplied the rest.
Brahms’s First Symphony closed the concert. Conductor Brent Mitchell’s gestures – mostly flowing curves and swoops, with remarkably few obvious cues – never seemed especially consequential, and the reading was fluent, light on tragedy with room for real magic in the slow movement. There were tense moments in the brass chorales that introduced the finale, followed by a sequence of near-miraculous woodwind riffs. The strings played with the assurance of a group that knows this score deeply, and the concertmaster’s solo near the end of the slow movement was exquisite, even as the conductor kept his gaze fixed ahead.
The Pasadena Symphony’s season opener demonstrated why orchestras such as this matter: they can offer performances of personality, commitment and genuine surprise. Benjamin Beilman’s exceptional Barber, above all, showed an ensemble capable of making an artistic claim on any audience’s attention.
Laurence Vittes