The Jacksonville Symphony proved Saturday night that it celebrates in grand style. Marking 75 years since the Symphony’s founding, Music Director Courtney Lewis led one of the most monumental programs in the ensemble’s history. The Symphony’s full forces, joined by over 160 singers, immersed the near-capacity audience in a thrilling account of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.”
Symphony planners, seeing the culmination of two years of their planning efforts, acknowledged the importance of the work and of the occasion with a star-studded guest cast. World-renowned soprano Ailyn Pérez and Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard brought to the stage a distinguished presence. The Symphony’s own cast of top-notch musicians held their own, staving off any risk of being overshadowed.
Following a rousing journey through the opening movement, Lewis’s take on the second movement (referred to as the “Ländler” or “Austrian folk song” movement) demonstrated pure revelry in the warmth of the Symphony’s string sound. The strings’ singing, resonant pizzicati was masterfully answered by harpist Kayo Ishimaru-Fleisher’s balanced tone in the movement’s final bow. Throughout, the strings’ beautiful phrases clearly took inspiration from Lewis’s most supple and charming conducting of the night.
The later thrills of the finale helped to look past the awkwardness in the reading of the third movement Scherzo. Despite the string section’s masterful negotiation of the constant motion under concertmaster Adelya Nartadjieva’s leadership, sincerity never quite gave way to Mahler’s sardonic tone (“with humor,” Mahler instructs the E-flat clarinetist). The interpretation struggled to identify the details in the Scherzo worth looking past. Balance between brass and strings was a constant struggle. As a result, one of the movement’s most important details — the “death shriek” — ultimately fell flat.
In stark contrast, the collaboration developed into its most harmonious result in the symphony’s fifth movement finale. Over the course of the movement, Lewis commanded the ensemble through unrelenting bouts of intense drama, both bombastic and whisper quiet. The forceful start of the finale recalled the opening minutes of the work, with the Jacksonville Symphony sounding its best at both points. Midway through the movement, despite difficulties of execution, offstage horns convincingly sounded a distant call of more to come.
From here, Lewis and the full ensemble relished in the finale’s searching intensity balanced with a focused direction to the end. Lewis overcame pitfalls in the densely sophisticated score, giving meaning even to the potentially mundane spaces between the music’s eruptions or inward retreats. Director of the Jacksonville Symphony Chorus Donald McCullough’s expert preparation of the choral forces (representing the Jacksonville Symphony Chorus, the University of North Florida Chorale and the Jacksonville University Singers) elevated the performance to new heights, heard through the varied chorus’s clear diction and disciplined control of its sound.
The evening reached its peak in the work’s climax, the namesake “resurrection” moment, near the end of the finale. The combined efforts of 90 orchestral instrumentalists, over 160 singers, two guest-star vocalists and the Bryan Concert Organ expressed an unforgettable musical celebration of more than just the occasion or the composer’s score — this musical outburst seemed to celebrate life itself. In this nearly mythical moment, Lewis’s full-body gestures evoked the sincere theatricality of Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein depiction, conducting this same moment in Cooper’s “Maestro” (the film also features guest mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard). The work’s narrative, the ensemble’s sound and the conductor’s gesture all combined to craft this sublime moment.
Before the performance, the guest list on stage included Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan. Deegan declared Sept. 21 Jacksonville Symphony Day to mark its founding on this day 75 years before. She remarked how the Symphony’s presence distinguishes Jacksonville as a city, much like the city’s professional football team. Given the once-in-a-lifetime performance the Symphony presented to local residents Saturday night, perhaps she might have made an understatement.
Matt Bickett is a musician and scholar living in Jacksonville, Florida.
