The San Francisco Bay Area’s smaller-budget orchestras, which include the Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose, California, Redwood, and Marin Symphonies, make a great contribution to the region’s collective artistic life — performing standard and unusual repertory, commissioning new works, and providing music education to their immediate communities. Their ambition and community service are beyond admirable.
Sometimes that ambition results in overreach, and this was the case on Saturday, Dec. 7, in Weill Hall at Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center, where the Santa Rosa Symphony, under Music Director Francesco Lecce-Chong, played Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor (“Resurrection”).
The concert opened with the world premiere of Warum hast du gelitten? (Why have you suffered) by Jonathan Leshnoff, written as a companion piece to Mahler’s Second and incorporating texts from the Austrian composer’s letters. The program note for Leshnoff’s work contends that the Second Symphony “is too long to occupy one half of a concert but too short to fill a whole concert.” I can’t say I’m convinced by this.
Warum hast du gelitten? is for solo soprano, chorus, and the same immense orchestral forces that Mahler employs in his symphony. In mood and style, it most resembles the “Urlicht” (Primal light) movement of the Second — though, at approximately nine minutes, Leshnoff’s piece is somewhat longer.
It’s sober and serene and gave soprano Esther Tonea a chance to soar gorgeously on her own (apart from her short contribution to the Mahler). Leshnoff’s orchestra in this work is rather blocky, and his setting did not particularly illuminate the texts, which deal with the process of composing, life’s purpose, and death.
Different conductors take different approaches to Mahler’s music, and that’s as it should be. But Lecce-Chong’s conception of the work was never clear. That he elected to take a 20-minute intermission between the first and second movements didn’t help the symphony cohere. The intermission was long, distracting, and a far cry from the much briefer pause that the score requests.
The performance also wasn’t helped by the glaringly dry acoustics of Weill Hall, and it was impossible to tell whether Lecce-Chong was aiming for a crisply transparent sound or a warmly enveloping one. He was unable to keep the orchestral forces properly blended or balanced. A wind instrument would pop out of the texture for no apparent reason. The strings — and there were about 50 players onstage — were often buried under the winds. Wind players seated next to each other occasionally had difficulty playing a unison passage in tune.
Mahler’s symphony followed almost immediately after Leshnoff’s piece and began with a promisingly aggressive attack, but the first movement didn’t hold together well because of Lecce-Chong’s choppy phrasing across its 20-minute length. The second movement, a gentle, waltzlike ländler, was played metronomically, without charm or rhythmic lift, though the orchestral balances did improve.
The third-movement scherzo continued in a similar vein, with little or no rubato. It sounded too cautious and controlled, yet there was one point where the orchestra didn’t seem entirely together.
The fourth and fifth movements, which feature the vocal soloists and chorus, were better and perhaps received more rehearsal time. Still, the long fifth movement was episodic, making progress in fits and starts rather than in a clear through line.
Mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Beteag sang “Urlicht” with rich depth of tone and consoling authority. (I could imagine her in one of Mahler’s symphonic song cycles.) Principal oboe Laura Reynolds was eloquent in her solo as well.
In the last movement, Tonea and Beteag, both recent Adler Fellows at San Francisco Opera, sounded great, whether singing separately or together, though the orchestra sometimes covered them.
The SSU Symphonic Chorus, directed by Jenny Bent, and the Santa Rosa Junior College Chamber Singers, directed by Darita Seth, were well prepared and sang with warm tone and good phrasing.
