San Diego Symphony gets vocal in ‘Song of the Earth’

San Diego Symphony music director Jahja Ling. (Photo courtesy of the San Diego Symphony)

Everyone who cares anything about the San Diego Symphony is accustomed to seeing music director Jahja Ling conducting the orchestra.

But reciting ancient Chinese poetry?

Now that’s unusual. And it was part of Friday’s San Diego Symphony program at downtown’s Copley Symphony Hall, the site of the weekend’s three performances of Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde” (”The Song of the Earth”), based on an anthology of poems.

As Ling read some of the verses (quite dramatically, by the way), the Chinese text  flashed on a screen above the stage and symphony commentator Nuvi Mehta read the English translations. It was an inspired idea that helped prepare the audience for the 1909 masterwork that’s part of the orchestra’s Mahler cycle.

Lasting 67 minutes, Friday’s performance was music-making on an epic scale, aided by the outstanding vocal soloists, mezzo-soprano Jane Irwin and tenor Anthony Dean Griffey. It dwarfed the program’s other offering, Barber’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Violinist Karen Gomyo was a model of intensity and accuracy, even in the final movement’s fast - and fiendishly difficult - series of triplets.

But as well as the orchestra played in the Barber, the Mahler posed a mightier challenge. Part song cycle and part symphony, “The Song of the Earth” is a reflection on mortality that is, by turns, bitter, sweet, tormented and transcendent. True to Mahler’s spiritual impulses, it’s imbued with a kind of mystical pantheism grounded in a profound appreciation for nature.

Listening to the symphony’s performance, it was easy to savor the Asian influences - such as the exotic-sounding pentatonic melodies and soft hiss of a gong - along with Mahler’s late-romantic style, often so wrenchingly beautiful.

Forgive me for being musically needy, even greedy, but I wanted more from the performance in terms of emotionally charged highs and lows. To me, Mahler’s music is most effective when there are powerful contrasts between loud and soft, brutality and tenderness, hope and despair, all leading to catharsis.

Still, Friday’s performance was a commendable achievement. Ling and the orchestra were undaunted by the demands of the score, and deserve special credit for their rhythmic flexibility. They knew how to pull back or push forward, just as the score required. And skillful contributions were heard in everything from strings to winds, harps to celesta.

Tenor Anthony Dean Griffey. (Courtesy photo)

The singers, too, did much to bring listeners into Mahler’s world.

“Dark is life, dark is death,” Griffey sang with the dramatic conviction he has brought to such operas as Britten’s “Peter Grimes,” which San Diego Opera presented last season. (See SDNN’s video interview with Griffey.) Though the large orchestra occasionally overpowered him, his voice was supple and attractive, as in the lively section titled “Of Youth.”

Irwin was similarly persuasive. When she sang “My heart is weary,” you felt the angst. When she sang about young women happily picking flowers, her phrasing was light and buoyant. She made the music smile.

That and more helped Mahler’s “Song of the Earth” find its voice and sing.

Event info: The San Diego Symphony’s program will be repeated at 8 p.m. November 21 and 2 p.m. November 22 at Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St., downtown. Tickets/information: (619) 235-0804; www.sandiegosymphony.com

Valerie Scher is the SDNN Arts & Entertainment editor. You can reach her at valerie.scher(at)sdnn.com; follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vscher

Tags: Anthony Dean Griffey, classical concerts, Copley Symphony Hall, Das Lied von der Erde, Jahja Ling, Jane Irwin, Karen Gomyo, Mahler, Nuvi Mehta, review San Diego Symphony, Samuel Barber, san diego events, San Diego Symphony, San Diego Symphony review, SDNN, Song of the Earth, Valerie Scher, what to do this weekend

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Arts & Entertainment, Classical-Opera . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.