Jacobs’ Masterwork Series Helps SD Symphony to Shine
By Jeff Britton

If you haven’t been to one of the San Diego Symphony’s Jacobs’ Masterwork concerts lately, you are not only missing some splendid music but a free education to boot.

Prior to each of the three weekend concerts Friday and Saturday evenings and the Sunday matinee, the affable and articulate Nuvi Mehta gives a free lecture to prepare concertgoers for the music to follow. Mehta clearly has both the gift of gab and an abiding love for classical music, which is reflected in the down-to-earth vignettes he relates about the various composers and what inspired a particular composition.

If you miss the lecture, Mehta will give an abbreviated, pithy introduction just after intermission for the second half of the concert. Most recently, that was about Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” a work written a few years before the composer’s death of pneumonia at the age of 49.

“Das Lied” was the centerpiece of the concert, a work of considerable harmonic and tonal complexity that show Mahler’s preoccupation with death. Based on a German poem, it also reflects his interest in oriental philosophy since the six parts are all based on German translations of ancient Chinese poems.

As part of Mehta’s primer, conductor Jahja Ling, an Indonesian of Chinese descent, stepped to the podium to read the poems in Chinese, while the characters were flashed above the stage and Mehta translated.

It has often been said that Mahler’s nine symphonies are songlike and that his six song cycles like “Das Lied” are symphonic. Both reflect his personal feelings and his later compositions were moody — full of longing, desolation and loneliness. Like Beethoven and Mozart, Mahler yearned for a peaceful brotherhood of man, but the world never seemed to oblige.

Emotions dominate in “Das Lied” as it was written during a tragic time in Mahler’s life. His 5-year-old daughter died of scarlet fever, he resigned his post as director of the Vienna Opera and he was diagnosed with heart disease.

Written for mezzo-soprano and tenor with orchestra, the Nov. 20-22 concerts were blessed with two extraordinary vocalists: Jane Irwin and Anthony Dean Griffey.

In the opening “Drinking Song of Earth’s Misery,” Griffey at first had to compete with the orchestral bombast as he sang this sad summary of life and death’s overall darkness. One hears Mahler’s anger as he faces his own mortality.

Irwin, who is beloved in her native England, stolidly sang in a voice redolent with chromatic richness the wistful “Lonely One in Autumn.” Most intriguing was her handling of the song which mused about youth. Her suavity contrasted nicely with the orchestra’s rambunctious theme, which gradually dissipates into one of delicate beauty.

Griffey returned with a steadfast defense of drunkenness as the best state to cope with life’s pain in a voice both lithe and sarcastic. But it was the final “The Parting” that gave “Das Lied” its portent. Irwin milked its haunting theme for all its pathos, and made us aware of Mahler’s brilliant interplay of singer and orchestration. Appropriately, the harp plucked out a Chinese melody.

The concert opened with a fine reading of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto by Karen Gomyo. The Canadian spun out the impossibly romantic theme as it builds to a grand climax for the strings section. A few piano bass chords introduce the violin and later Gomyo made merry with the woodwinds in a mix of sultry legato strokes and high soft treble notes.

In the pensive middle movement, she elicited a meandering but equally romantic melody through a series of bold dramatic strokes designed to tug at the heartstrings. But it was in the manic finale where Gomyo’s virtuosity was brought full bore. Nonstop, rapid-fire passages were marked by driving triplets, racing sixteenths and some challenging work at the top of the violin’s range. She carried it off like a champ.

Next up in the Jacobs’ Masterworks series Dec. 4-6 is another grand amalgam of orchestral and vocal music: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Ode to Joy. It features the San Diego Master Chorale in one of the most thrilling choral symphonies ever composed. They are helmed by a quartet of soloists: soprano Erin Wall, mezzo Kelley O’Connor, tenor Robert Breault and baritone Nathaniel Webster.

Inspired by the spirit of the French Revolution and his belief that man’s birthright is to be free, Beethoven took Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” with its thrilling refrain, “All mankind are brothers,” and used it as the concluding movement of his last symphony.

To proclaim it, he added voices to a very sophisticated symphony because he felt that only through the human voice could he evoke the deepest feelings of mankind. Not only is its message apropos to the holiday season, but it promises to be one of the highlights of the impressive Jacobs’ series.

If lighter fare appeals more, the Holiday Pops concerts Dec. 16-20 features “Movin’ Out” star Michael Cavanaugh with the orchestra in a salute to the season. Also giving the concert some Latin flair is the Mariachi Champaña Nevin.

For information on future symphony concerts, visit www.sandiegosymphony.com or call (619) 235-0804.