United Kingdom Boyer, Korngold, Mahler: Akiko Suwanai (violin), Pasadena Symphony / Brett Mitchell (conductor). Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, 26.10.2024. (LV)
Peter Boyer – New Beginnings
Korngold – Violin Concerto in D major, Op.35
Mahler – Symphony No.1, ‘Titan’
The Pasadena Symphony’s new music director, Brett Mitchell, used an edition of Mahler’s Symphony No.1 that, while controversial, brought with it a breath of fresh air. Ambassador Auditorium, with its splendid acoustics and embraceable seating, affirmed its standing as perhaps the best orchestral hall in town.
The program began with Peter Boyer’s New Beginnings, featuring brass fanfares and driving rhythms with a lyrical middle section that suggested Copland’s American-style melodies. It is richly orchestrated and makes the instruments shine. No wonder it has been performed more than 25 times. In fact, this was Mitchell’s third performance of the piece, following earlier appearances with the Houston Symphony and Colorado Symphony, and the playing had the audience on the edge of their seats.
The soloist was violinist Akiko Suwanai, who won the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990. She swept through Korngold’s Concerto as so many do – it is meant to be swept through – balancing Hollywood glamour with refined elegance. Her silvery tone in the rhapsodic slow movement and graceful handling of the finale’s pyrotechnics brought out the work’s lyrical soul rather than just its surface, Tinseltown brilliance.
The tone for Mahler’s First Symphony was set by the precision of the gurgling clarinets, the charming and natural ebb and flow of the dialogue between the offstage horns and the trumpets, and the lovely understated cello portamenti. It was light-hearted, like a Haydn symphony. The Ländler swing in the second movement was just right and resisted the temptation to make parts of the Trio into a clog dance. The oboe and flute solos in the Trio and throughout were exquisite, lovely in tone and alive with nuance and color.
The controversy is whether the famous funeral march opening of the third movement should be played as a striking, surreal solo by a single double bass (as is traditional), or more smoothly by the entire bass section in unison. While historical evidence from Mahler’s time definitively favors the solo bass interpretation, the 1992 Critical Edition argued for the full section based on score analysis. And that is the interpretation Mitchell played.
The result was more like Schubert than Kurt Weill, perfectly aligned with Mitchell’s more human-scaled, less titanic overall concept. The interpretation revealed layers of chamber music-like intimacy, with wonderful woodwind solos floating above crystalline textures, and trumpet work that managed to be both brilliant and beautifully integrated. The strings, rather than overwhelming with sheer power, created a mesmerizing transparency; the first violins, in particular, brought an otherworldly radiance to the great themes. The final movement built with inexorable momentum to a conclusion that was both musically thrilling and emotionally cathartic. For Mitchell, it was a remarkably assured debut that suggests exciting times ahead for the Pasadena Symphony.
Laurence Vittes