Stagecoach ride takes a varied route

The West, wild or otherwise, and the way it has played on the imagination of composers is the idea behind the Pacific Symphony’s American Composers Festival this year. Does that mean the great outdoors? Yes. Cowboys and Indians? Of course. Might we also include a 13th century British astronomer and Olivia Newton-John? It’s a free country.

And so the orchestral program “An American Tale” -- the festival’s main offering, first presented Thursday night at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa -- contained the obvious and the less obvious.

The predictable pieces were from the 1930s -- Ferde Grofe’s “Grand Canyon Suite” and the suite from Copland’s “Billy the Kid” -- works that strongly defined what we still think of as the western style. From left field came Stephen Scott, who was commissioned to write a bowed-piano concerto; Curt Cacioppo, a composer in the Midwest with a strong interest in the culture and historical plight of Native Americans; and Lou Harrison, whose 1955 “Four Strict Songs,” influenced by Navajo poetic forms, is a neglected masterpiece.

Each composer’s attitude and relationship to his environment differed, so the program could be likened to a stagecoach ride with an assortment of colorful characters. That left John Ford’s job -- giving this musical journey drama, interest, coherence -- to the orchestra’s music director, Carl St.Clair, a native Texan.

The trip began in California with the premiere of Scott’s “Pacific Crossroads,” a concerto offering up musical descriptions of fanciful Southern California meetings. Junipero Serra (the 18th century Franciscan monk who founded California’s missions) cozies up to sculptor Richard Serra (whose “Connector” stands outside the concert hall). Olivia Newton-John’s odd bedfellow is John of Hollywood (the medieval astronomer for whom you-know-what was named).

On Monday, Scott’s bowed piano had opened the festival with an hourlong work demonstrating that the composer and his students at Colorado College can produce a magically mellow sonic aura of deep humming and heavenly high flutes by bowing the instrument’s strings with horsehair and fishing lines or plucking and tickling its innards with this tool or that. In “Pacific Crossroads,” though, incompatible acoustical encounters take place.

Perhaps, with sophisticated amplification, the mellow bowed piano and orchestra could complement each other. Thursday, the solo instrument was a lost cause. So was the orchestra, for that matter. The bowed piano transforms slight music into enchantment. The orchestra reminds us of such music’s banality. Serra’s steel sculptures were the sound of metal percussion. I assume the Spanishy music was meant to evoke the missions.

Harrison’s “Strict Songs,” written for eight baritones and orchestra in 1955 and years later re-scored for chorus (the version used here), is one of the California composer’s first important West-meets-East endeavors. The West comes from the texts praising holiness, nourishment, tenderness and splendor that were inspired by Native Americans.

The East is in the music. Harrison tunes his ensemble to a purer intonation than is customarily used, so the instrumentation is limited to strings, harp, two trombones, specially tuned piano and percussion (including tuned porcelain bowls filled with water).

Fusing such influences as Native American culture with, say, the Indonesian would soon become second nature to Harrison and have a transforming effect on American music. In “Strict Songs,” the composer, who had recently returned to Northern California after a turbulent decade on the East Coast, conveys a glorious sense of reconnection with his roots along with the discovery of some new ones.

The glow of this music reflects the light of the California coast, an illumination that feels simultaneously from the sun and from a spiritual source within. The songs, and the texts Harrison wrote, are strict in their forms, but the music flows unencumbered. St.Clair conducted a marvelous performance, and the Pacific Chorale was clear and careful.

The concert’s second half began with the jazzy splash of excerpts from “Grand Canyon Suite” (the opening “Sunrise” and the final “Cloudburst”), played, as this music must be, without concern for decorum or taste.

The western verve of “Billy the Kid” easily transfers from St.Clair’s blood to his baton. More important, so did the spiritual side of Copland’s magnificent score, in which St.Clair brilliantly produced a feeling that the power of a landscape is a greater protagonist than the cowboy.

Cacioppo in “Crying for Justice,” which came between these two great evocations of the great outdoors, is angrier. The seven-minute piece -- in a style more like that of Copland’s later abstract orchestral music -- doesn’t much evoke a sense of place. But whether quiet or loud, the score, written in 1998 and performed here for the first time by a professional orchestra, does point a listener’s ears in the direction of outrage and compassion.

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mark.swed@latimes.com

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Pacific Symphony

Where: Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Orange County Performing Artscenter, 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 8 tonight

Price: $25 to $95

Contact: (714) 755-5799 or

www.pacificsymphony.org