Zubin Mehta Return to L.A. Phil with Brahms and a Historic ‘Gurrelieder’
/By Truman C. Wang
12/17/2024
This month, Zubin Mehta, the L.A. Phil’s beloved Music Director Emeritus, returned to conduct a pair of concerts. The first, on December 8, was a Brahms program featuring the Second Symphony and Violin Concerto. Leonidas Kavakos, the violinist, delivered a fine performance that was ever so expressive, a singing tone that was also smiling, and a long lyrical arc (in the adagio) that switched effortlessly between spiritual cantabile and wistful filigree. (Marion Kuszyk’s fine oboe playing in the adagio matched Kavakos’ sense of wonder and enchantment.) In the encore (Gigue from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2), which Kavakos played with blazing speed (and faultless intonation), there was intellectual rigor balanced with emotional expression.
The orchestra responded to Kavakos’ playing with the sensitivity and intimacy of chamber music players, each finishing the other’s phrase as naturally as two like-minded confidants. The same chamber music quality also prevailed in the Brahms Symphony No. 2, which maestro Mehta conducted with great warmth and verve. The musicians, half of whom were probably not even born when Mehta was L.A. Phil’s Music Director (1962-1978), all played like old souls, responding to the conductor’s subtle gestural cues with immediate and maximum effects.
On December 13, Mehta conducted Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, a work that he had premiered in L.A. 56 years ago in 1968. As it so happened, it was Friday the 13th, a day hated by superstitious Schoenberg, who bizarrely died on the 13th at age 76 (7+6 = 13!) I attended the second Gurrelieder on the 15th. It was probably the biggest concert I ever saw in term of manpower: orchestra of 150, chorus of 100, 10 horns, 7 flutes, 4 harps, 3 bassoons, 5 soloists, 1 speaker. Composed originally as a late Romantic piece before Schoenberg's radical atonal period, Gurrelieder tells a haunting tale of passionate love, zombie apocalypse, and final transcendence. Musically it’s quite a smorgasbord of Brahms, Wagner and Berg’s sprechgesang, and the sung words are often difficult, if not impossible, to make out without projected titles. Even the great Los Angeles Master Chorale (all clad in black zombie outfits), renowned for their clarity of diction, could do little to un-muddle Schoenberg’s messy, over-complicated choral writing for Gurrelieder, although, to be fair, their frenzied yelping and hollering in the finale as the marching undead was undeniably exciting indeed.
soprano christine goerke (l), mezzo-soprano violeta urmana (r) in ‘gurrelieder
It’s a long, sprawling work lasting 1 hour 40 minutes. Under Mehta’s brisk, taut direction, however, minutes seemed like seconds even in the meandering Part One, where one slow love song is followed by an even slower love song. The orchestra played well, luxuriating in the lush Romantic harmonies of early Schoenberg – from the twilight birdsongs, to echoes of the Tristan chord, to the ghostly interlude just before the speaker’s entrance (played by a piccolo, harp arpeggio and the droning lower winds.) The massive combined forces filled Walt Disney Concert Hall with a wall of sound both sumptuous and terrifying.
The five vocal soloist and one speaker were all exceptional. Wagnerian heavyweights John Matthew Myers and Christine Goerke sang the pair of medieval lovers Waldemar and Tove with effortless, ample vocal power. Gabriel Manro (the peasant), Gerhard Siegel (Klaus) and Dietrich Henschel (speaker) all acted their parts convincingly. Violeta Urmana, the Wood Dove, gave the finest solo singing of the concert, her magnificent mezzo-soprano narrating Tove’s death and Waldemar’s sorrow with fulsome tone and tragic intensity.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.