PORT ANGELES — Just back from leading concerts in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, maestro Jonathan Pasternack is ready for Christmas music in his adopted home town.
Pasternack, a globetrotting conductor and the new music director of the Port Angeles Symphony, will take up his baton before the 66-piece orchestra for two concerts Saturday: First, the final dress rehearsal at 10 a.m. and then the evening concert at 7:30 p.m.
As a prelude to the latter, Pasternack will give a short talk on the musical program at 6:40 p.m., and as always, the venue is the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave.
These are the symphony’s holiday celebrations, with well-known classics and music from Norwegian, Russian, Austrian and American masters, played by an orchestra whose musicians range from teenagers to septuagenarians.
They’re also the fourth set of concerts led by Pasternack, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-born conductor hired earlier this year.
Tuesday evening, Pasternack was across the ocean in Bulgaria, guiding the Plovdiv Philharmonic in a program of Beethoven, Prokofiev and Brahms.
His engagement with that orchestra preceded his hiring by the Port Angeles Symphony, he wrote in an email to the Peninsula Daily News, and “the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra board graciously supported my wish to honor the previous commitment.”
In his stead, Pasternack added, “I was very fortunate that my wonderful colleague in Port Angeles, James Ray, was available to lead two rehearsals” of the orchestra.
At practice Monday night, the musicians were hard at work, filling an empty Port Angeles High School auditorium with the melodies of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Silent Night,” “Joy to the World,” and other works from Leroy Anderson’s “A Christmas Festival.”
The sound, with the horns, the percussion, the violins, oboes, flutes and cellos, is an expanding one, a long way from anything that comes out of a radio at this time of year.
Along with “Christmas Festival,” the symphony’s December concerts also have music that’s festive — but not always featured on Christmasy programs.
On the itinerary:
■ “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen,” a work Edvard Grieg composed to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary;
■ “Traditional Slavic Christmas Music” by Leopold Stokowski;
■ “Swan Lake Suite” by Piotr I. Tchaikovsky;
■ Prelude to “Hansel and Gretel” by Englebert Humperdinck;
■ An instrumental version of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah;”
■ The Radetzky March by Johann Strauss Sr.;
■ A Christmas sing-along, arranged by Thomas Kennedy and including “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Silent Night,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and other carols.
Pasternack looks forward to all of this, and notes that the Hallelujah Chorus will be a highlight.
It is a brilliant, triumphant piece of music, he said: “a wonderful holiday concert selection, with or without the words being sung.”
The chorus will be played, not sung this time — but the audience will have ample opportunity to lift their voices in the carol sing-along.
These first months have been satisfying both personally and artistically, Pasternack said.
He plans to make a lot more music in 2016, “sharing with our audiences,” he said, “the joy of what we love doing so much.”
