Pacific Symphony delivers Romantic excess better than classic Beethoven

To open Pacific Symphony’s 39th season on Thursday, music director Carl St.Clair trundled out three heavyweights – Beethoven, Wagner and Richard Strauss – that he claimed ruled the musical world of Germany from 1770 to 1949.
St.Clair, a lover of all things German who has spent large parts of his career there, can be forgiven a little hyperbole and historical inaccuracy. Those dates span the birth year of Beethoven (when he didn’t write much) to the year Strauss died, and