Few composers can sustain enough interest for a multi-concert retrospective of their music, let alone the kind of monster concert that was devoted solely to Gustav Mahler last Sunday at Disney Hall. Part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Mahler Grooves” festival, the day was practically a feast for the ears, with youth orchestras opening the day with excerpts from various symphonies. The evening’s Mahlerthon was devoted to his Sixth and Second Symphonies, programmed back-to-back, with the early Piano Quartet fragment and the Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen serving as pivot.
The latter, heard in Arnold Schoenberg’s chamber arrangement, was sung superbly by mezzo-soprano Jon Won Chae, whose rich voice, chiseled with polished diction, glided over the fine accompaniment by members of the USC Thornton Symphony. Fine, too, was the performance of the composer’s Piano Quartet in A minor, a beguiling thing whose Brahmsian and Franckian influences betray little of the mature genius to come.
Flanking these works were Mahler’s Sixth and Second Symphonies, diametric opposites in style and expression, programmed in such a way as to lead their audience from the depth of darkness to transcendent light.
Neal Stulberg, a compelling champion of music obscure and neglected, proved himself just as charismatic an interpreter of music far better known. With the UCLA Philharmonia attentively following his baton, he led a performance of the Sixth that trusted the score to convey its bitterness and ghoulish humor without needing to resort to interpretive exaggerations. Stulberg’s smartly-paced interpretation, free of put-on angst, neatly framed the music’s blend of drama and classical restraint. He also allowed space for his fine wind soloists to blossom in their solo parts, with English hornist Adelle Rodkey and bassoonist Davis Lerner especially standing out.
It was, however, the performance of the Second Symphony that perhaps will endure in the audience’s and orchestra’s memories for a long time to come. Regrettably, I had never heard of conductor Earl Lee until last Sunday. Anyone jaded by Mahler ought to have heard his heroic unto messianic reading of the Resurrection. He seized one’s attention immediately with the emphatic attack he drew from the Colburn Orchestra’s strings, which set the pace for a taut performance of the opening movement that was a true Allegro maestoso. His sense of momentum was effortless, as if the score were simply playing itself. It was an interpretation that brimmed with delight in the score’s interpretive details, evinced by the ease with which conductor rendered various thorny passages, such as the impeccable elasticity he wielded in its transitions. This is virtuoso music that demands a virtuoso conductor. Lee met this challenge head-on. The force of his personality goaded the Colburn Orchestra into delivering one of its finest performances in recent memory, their musicians clearly hanging on to their conductor’s beat.
They were joined in the beatific finale by mezzo-soprano Kayleigh Decker, soprano Madison Leonard and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. In her singing of Urlicht, Decker balanced nobility with vulnerability, the latter threaded with delicate pathos by concertmaster Alena Hove’s solos. Leonard’s voice shone resplendently over the dawn of eternity announced by the choir’s entrance, whose breadth of tone quality – from rapt to roof-raising – displayed their sovereign corporate artistry. When the chorus and soloists broke forth with their ecstatic “Aufersteh’n” at the coda, their call, for once, nearly convinced one that the resurrection of the dead after the Last Judgment was imminent.
Currently the music director of the Ann Arbor Symphony, Lee’s interpretive verve had me scratching my head. How is somebody with this level of talent not heading one of the Big Five orchestras? In a world where conductors worth hearing can be scarce, Lee stands out as somebody who demands to be far wider known. Dispensing with anything routine, Lee’s presence was not only the highlight of Sunday’s monster concert, but arguably stole the show from outgoing LA Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, for whom the “Mahler Grooves” festival was a showcase. Lee, whose talents and personality would brighten any orchestra, will certainly be welcome here again in Los Angeles, whether as guest or, hopefully, permanent resident.
