Review

Mozart, Mahler shine in concert

By Glenn Pillsbury

Special to The Record

November 17, 2007 6:00 AM

Two visions of Vienna more than a century apart came together in an enjoyable and successful concert Thursday as the Stockton Symphony closed the first half of its 2007-08 season. The program will be repeated tonight at Atherton Auditorium.

The performance paired the classical style of Mozart's well-known Symphony No. 40 with the romanticism of Mahler's Symphony No. 4. The first work was written in 1788, the second in 1901, and if the music produced in the intervening years has made it difficult for modern audiences to link the two, the symphony's balanced execution helped re-establish the connection.

Conductor Peter Jaffe took the Mozart at a very brisk tempo overall, which worked nicely for the two outer movements but gave the two inner movements a bit of a perfunctory feel. The rhythmic precision so characteristic of Mozart's day was also well done in the outer movements but less so in the inner ones, at times sounding muddy. Still, the low strings performed with surprising finesse and energy in the last movement's highly virtuosic sections.

Mahler's heavyweight reputation is belied here by the subtle grace of his fourth symphony. His usual propensity for massive structures, performing forces and overall length is moderated as well. While the work lasts nearly an hour, Jaffe and the orchestra easily led the listener along its path.

Filled with a variety of small-instrument groupings and melodies, the opening two movements got things off to an engaging start. The winds had much of the say here, with clarinetist Erin Finkelstein, flutist Johanna Borenstein and oboist Kyle Bruckmann creating an elegant blend and jaunty texture. Even the rarely heard contrabassoon got into the act, with Lawrence Rhodes providing some extreme low end.

The emotional weight of the symphony lies in its third movement, one of Mahler's favorites. Jaffe's command of the opening carefully shaped the haunting pathos of the cellos' line, and as the intense texture built up through successive entries by the violas and second violins, the inevitable arrival of the first violins into the whirl produced the evening's most astonishing and beautiful music.

With so much already in the mix, the appearance of soprano Aimée Puentes in the symphony's final movement topped off the emotional journey. Puentes was in fine voice throughout, and her handling of the movement's gentler chordal passages contained just the right amount of expressive dissonance with the orchestra to remind us of the text's underlying humanity.

 Contact Glenn Pillsbury at features@recordnet.com.