“Magnificent Mozart & Mahler” close out the LBSO Season

The reduced strings of the Long Beach Symphony and Music Director Eckart Preu acknowledge the applause after their performance of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

REVIEW

Long Beach Symphony, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

DAVID J BROWN

While concert hall programs are often dominated by the big “B”s of the classical repertoire—Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, et al—the “M”s can muster a fair few luminaries as well, and the final concert of the Long Beach Symphony’s 2025-2026 season, as ever under the baton of its Music Director Eckart Preu, was devoted to two of the current brightest: the first a fixture of the repertoire for around a century-and-a-half (perhaps not as long as you might have imagined, given that this year marks the 270th anniversary of Mozart’s birth), and the other exhibiting an inexorable rise in popularity over much less than half that time.

Eckart Preu.

This was, of course, Gustav Mahler, and the LBSO’s current financial buoyancy (long may it continue!) enabled it to muster the largest forces I can recall ever seeing on the Terrace Theater platform, for a performance of his Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor.

I had intended to prepare for this by dusting off some CDs but life intervened, and so I came to Maestro Preu’s interpretation with virtually “innocent ears,” apart from memories of a performance by the Pacific Symphony a couple of years ago in the Segerstrom Concert Hall at Costa Mesa (reviewed here).

To start with, his pre-concert talk was an object-lesson in enthusiastic, fact-filled, and insightful comment about both work and composer, sketching in Mahler’s fraught childhood, his early maturity, his rise in fame as a conductor, and the ethical compromises he made to help secure his appointments as artistic director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper) in 1897 and the Vienna Philharmonic in 1898.

Mahler's composing hut in Maiernigg,
near Maria Wörth in Carinthia, Austria,
where he wrote the Fifth Symphony.

As for the Fifth Symphony itself, written in the summers of 1901 and 1902 between Mahler's torrentially busy conducting and administrative duties, Preu emphasized its overall darkness-to-light progression, which may be seen against the background of his rapid rise to pre-eminence in Vienna’s musical culture, a traumatic near-death experience in February 1901, and his affair with and then marriage to the charismatic Alma Schindler in March 1902.

Mahler never approached symphonic structure twice in the same way, and though Symphonies 1, 4, 6, and 9 do adopt the classic four-movement pattern, each is so vastly different in expressive content from the others as to render that commonality irrelevant. Like Symphonies 2, 7, and 10, No. 5 has five movements, but in it, uniquely, Mahler grouped them into three parts: 1 (I+II), 2 (III), and 3 (IV+V).

The Fifth can be felt to conform to the four-movement “standard” if movements I and II are heard as a unity, with movement I, headed Trauermarsch (Funeral March), acting as a huge exposition and its successor an equally massive development, and the way Preu began his clearly thought-through conception of the whole work lent weight to this.

Miles McAllister.

After waiting and—with typical consideration—allowing principal trumpet Miles McAllister to take his own time before embarking on the cruelly exposed, and crucial, 13-measure solo that opens the symphony (in which he meticulously observed the plethora of expressive cues that Mahler spatters through what is surely a call-back—short-short-short-long—to the start of the most famous Fifth Symphony of them all!), the first movement proceeded just as Mahler conceived and marked it—not dragging, but truly In gemessenem Schritt, Streng wie ein Kondukt (with measured step, solemn as a funeral procession).

After this, to my ears, ideally paced and equally finely played account of the first movement, Preu underlined the unity between it and the second by embarking on the latter with barely a breath pause, though Mahler does not mark it attacca. Also, while lacking none of the storminess and vehemence that Mahler requests, his initial tempo, more measured than some conductors in this work, made its opening less of an abrupt shock and more of a natural reaction to the ground-down, exhausted conclusion of the Funeral March.

More thematically and expressively diverse than the first movement, the second can seem to lose its way in a less well-controlled and articulated performance than this, in which the most eloquent passage of all was the long unison soliloquy starting at measure 189 by the cellos alone under a pianissimo timpani roll, Langsam aber immer ((slowly but surely), played with total unanimity by the 10-strong section, led by principal Cécilia Tsan, to profoundly moving effect.

Gustav Mahler in 1902: pencil sketch by Emil Orik.

At the end of movement II Mahler does build in an interpretative pitfall. Its stormy, digressive progress eventually rises to a summit-like brass chorale that prefigures the final triumph that ends the whole work, but to draw out this chorale too much is a mistake.

There has to be a sense of something being kept in reserve, and this Preu finely achieved, so that its collapse into the monstrous chord that destroys all hope of resolution at this stage of the symphony felt exactly right (only a fanatic like me could regret that the tam-tam’s fff smash here—its only such marking in the whole piece—did not obliterate the rest of the otherwise perfectly balanced orchestra, all also fff!).

In a typical (if there be such a thing) four-movement symphony, the middle tends to be occupied by a slow movement and a much shorter scherzo, but in Mahler’s Fifth these proportions are reversed, so that what follows the shattered end of the second movement (still with that Beethovenian short-short-short-long muttering into extinction) is the largest and most complex scherzo in the symphonic repertoire—Part 2 in Mahler’s tripartite scheme—running to 819 measures and lasting around 19 minutes in this performance.

Alma Schindler in 1895, aged 16.

Mahler specifically requests a long pause before this entirely different music begins, with a bright flourish on four horns and then a horn solo leading into the first Ländler subject. He wrote in a letter to Alma: “The Scherzo is—the very devil… Conductors for the next fifty years will take it too fast and make nonsense of it—” and Maestro Preu avoided that with tempi more spacious than many performances and the LBSO responding with playing that was affectionate and easeful, but still alert and responsive.

However, this is arguably one of the most difficult movements in all of Mahler for interpreters to make dovetail and cohere, with a kaleidoscopic range of mood, texture, pace, and dynamic, and in a few places I felt juxtapositions didn’t quite work with the sense of inevitability and through line that they needed. Against that, though, there were many passages to be relished for the sheer élan of the LBSO’s playing collectively and individually, the standout being principal Melia Badalian’s magisterial handling of the long, rapturous horn solo, melancholic and challenging by turns, into which the tumultuous first half of the Scherzo devolves and out of which the movement’s increasingly buoyant latter part grows until its eruptive, headlong end.

Melia Badalian.

The other element in that reversal of middle-movement proportions is of course, the Adagietto, made famous by Visconti’s use of it on the sound-track of Death in Venice. Mahler does mark it Sehr langsam (very slow) and many modern recordings follow this literally, so that it plays for 12-13 minutes, or even longer. However, though sadly no recordings of Mahler conducting exist, in 1905 he did make four piano rolls, including the finale and Trauermarsch of Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5 respectively, and in all of them his tempi are crisp and faster than most modern recordings.

Willem Mengelberg.

Also, his close friend, the conductor Willem Mengelberg, used scores annotated with tempo indications provided by Mahler himself, and his 1926 recording of the Adagietto clocks in at well under eight minutes. In this performance by the LBSO, thankfully, Preu adopted a similar approach, and made the Adagietto—confirmed by Mengelberg to have been a love song to Alma— the gentle, flowing interlude that Mahler surely intended, aided by translucent playing from the LBSO strings, with Marcia Dickstein’s harp an equal partner in eloquence.

Marcia Dickstein.

Though neither as long nor as copiously scored as several other Mahler symphonies, the Fifth is as challenging to interpret and exhausting to play as any—and now after nearly an hour of orchestral turmoil, leavened for the wind, brass and percussion only by the Adagietto, he crowns the whole edifice with a 16-minute finale as complex, diverse, and virtuosically scored as anything that has gone before, but which nonetheless seemed to daunt neither conductor nor orchestra.

Mahler’s wide range of episodes includes several passages of complex fugal writing that were delivered with exemplary rhythmic clarity by the strings. Though, as ever for this listener, it felt as if there’s one too many false dawns as the finale approaches its climax, the whole orchestra surged through the great, conclusive-at-last, chorale and race to the finish with no sign of fatigue, earning a cheering standing ovation and several returns to the podium by Maestro Preu.

Mozart in 1789.

His choice of concert opener had been Mozart’s Serenade No. 13 in G major, K. 525, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” (1787), its origins as mysterious, as the program noted, as its familiarity is universal. This was a very sensible selection, not only because of that familiarity but also, being scored for strings only, it left the remainder of the orchestra fresh for their herculean task to come. Elegant, rhythmically pointed, and with inner parts always sounding alive and expressive, the reduced LBSO 8-6-6-4-3 strings gave a clear harbinger of what their full forces, at 14-12-10-10-8, would achieve in the Mahler.

However, before he set the Fifth Symphony in motion, Eckart Preu acknowledged the long service of LBSO members, calling for those with progressively more years to remain standing. No fewer than eight had been with the orchestra upwards of 45 years—Ann Brenton, Craig Gibson, Andy Honea, Leslie Lashinsky, Linda Stone, Jacqueline Suzuki, and Alvin Veeh— with a further three (Diane Alancraig, Marcia Dickstein, and Cynthia Moussas) clocking in at over 40.

But in truth, every one of the 90 players deserves a shout-out for the skill and commitment with which they executed this most demanding of symphonies. Long Beach has something treasurable in the partnership of its orchestra with their Music Director—long may it continue!

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Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach, Saturday, June 6, 2026, 7.30 p.m.

Images: The performance: David de Santiago; Mahler, composing hut, Mozart: Wikimedia Commons; Miles McAllister, Melia Badalian, Marcia Dickstein: Long Beach Symphony; Alma Schindler: Mahler Foundation.

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An Eclectic Program from USC Thornton’s Young Stars

l-r: Lina Bahn, Abigail Park, Louis Milne, Abigail Koehler, Solomon Leonard, Seth Parker Woods.

REVIEW

USC Thornton Chamber Virtuosi, Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Church

BARBARA GLAZER

This Classical Crossroads' concert featured USC Thornton faculty members Lina Bahn (violin) and Seth Parker Woods (cello), and their premier students—Louis Milne (clarinet), Abigail Park (violin), Solomon Leonard (viola), Andrew Edwards (piano), and Abigail Koehler (bass)—in a diverse program of European masterworks and ethnologically-imprinted American classical compositions. Bahn and Woods in supportive ensemble playing gave center stage to the students for solos in which they excelled, as well as poised and articulate context.

The concert began with all but Andrew Edwards playing You, on the Mountain and Blessed are your Wedding Garments, the first two movements of the four Palestinian Songs and Dances (2024) by the Syrian-born, American-raised Kareem Roustom (b. 1971), the Emmy-nominated ethnomusicologist and Professor of the Practice (orchestration, and film music composition) at Tufts University. Roustom is interested in contextualizing music as a kind of “genetic material” in which to preserve and transmit to a larger audience the whole of a society's culture.

Kareem Rustom.

His strong identification as an Orthodox Syriac Antiochian Christian has inspired his use of Orthodox melodic shapes, hymns, and chants for many works that bridge Western classical and Middle Eastern folk traditions. In You, on the Mountain, a Palestinian folksong with encoded messages for mountaintop-imprisoned loved ones (during the years of the British mandate) is refashioned as a highly emotional and programmatic chamber piece evocative of a place and culture. Blessed are your Wedding Garments, by contrast, uses a folk melody for line dancing at Middle Eastern weddings.

Roustom scored them for clarinet, string quartet, and audio playback, the latter for a more "orchestral" sound and a steady beat to support the melodic lines and more fluid instrumental rhythmic patterns. The clarinet substitutes for the mijwiz's piercing tones, the playback for the yarghul's drone, making the music more accessible for Western players and listeners. The playback is “optional” but its function is necessary. Various instruments can substitute for it and here it was a bass, on which Abigail Koehler was outstanding, and only at a few days’ notice.

Jenö Hubay.

All the players have to make finger adjustments and in addition the clarinet must use circular breathing and changes in embouchure to produce the maqam (Arabic scale), which on Jim Eninger's excellent video can clearly be heard. Clarinetist Milne's gorgeous spectral glissandi, and his ability to maintain the unbroken driving melody and lively rhythm needed to fuel the stamina of the wedding dancers, and suggest their bodily motions, were masterful.

For a stark contrast in music and locale, we next heard Park, with Edwards (piano), play the Carmen Fantaisie Brillante, Op. 3, No. 3 (1877), by the Hungarian-born violinist, composer, and teacher Jenö Hubay (1858-1937). It's a dazzling, virtuosic showpiece in which the 17-year-old Hubay, enthralled by hearing Bizet's Carmen, used the Aragonaise, Habanera, and Escamillo's triumphant Toreador Song (the only violin version to do so), not linearly, but as interwoven themes. It needs very advanced violin techniques as well as the ability to delineate sultry, flirtatious music, singing vocal lines, high drama, and a full “orchestral” sound. Park excelled—and was well supported by Edwards.

Andrew Edwards.

He returned for Debussy’s Étude No.11 (1915), dedicated to Chopin, and entitled Pour les arpèges composés. Its broken chords often include non-harmonic dissonances, while the impressionist use of harmonic tones, blended with a very precise sustaining pedal, is designed to produce the color of the notes—not just their mechanical sounding. This Étude is a masterpiece of shimmering fluid textures, of cascading harp-imitating lines, and strong dynamic contrasts in the scherzando middle section. Without written fingering, the pianist must find their own solutions to these demands of a keyboard exercise transformed into high art, and Edwards did well.

The Jewish/Argentinian/American multi-genre classical and film composer Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960)  is known for blending Western classical music with Latin-American genres and Jewish Klezmer music. He grew up in an Ashkenazi Eastern European household and this Ashkenazi klezmer tradition infuses The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Isaac the Blind (1160-1235), a kabbalist rabbi of Provence, theorized that the universe is shaped by the meaning and different combinations of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; Golijov’s work, of which the first movement was played, elaborates on this linguistic role in Jewish history by referencing three historic languages: Aramaic, Yiddish, and Hebrew.

Osvaldo Golijov.

In the Agitato con fuoco opening, the string quartet (Park, Bahn, Leonard, Woods) reference the Rosh Hashanah prayer Un' taneh Tokef—chanted in Hebrew, but containing many Aramaic words, grammatical structures, and concepts. This is juxtaposed with the klezmer clarinet invoking the confessional and merciful pleading prayer Avinu Malkeinu. Milne switched between three types of clarinet (B-flat, A, bass) to achieve a mix of crying, wailing, and weeping in contention with the upbeat dance-like rhythms and joyful klezmer sounds in a movement embodying the tension between ritual and faith, anxiety and yet joy. His was a very good effort at overcoming the movement’s many technical pitfalls.

Robert Schumann.

Next came the Andante cantabile third movement of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet, Op. 47, played by Park, Leonard, Woods, and Edwards. This, the work’s emotional core, features a lush, deeply romantic, song-like cello theme which evolves into a tender, almost canonic duet with the violin. Parks played beautifully, and Edwards was an equal colorist partner in his left-hand arpeggios and chordal responses; Woods did not over-emote, avoiding the maudlin or stretching the rhythms, enabling a gentle flow. An excellent performance by all.

Milne's clarinet solo, The Abyss of the Birds—the third movement (of eight) of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (1941)—was magnificent. Messiaen, a French hospital nurse, was captured (late Dec. 1940) by German troops, and while awaiting transportation to a POW camp with his friend, clarinetist Henri Akoka, started writing The Abyss of the Birds, envisioned as part of a suite inspired by his deep Christian faith—in particular, Chapter 10 of the Book of Revelation.

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992).

With a sympathetic camp guard's provision of a pencil, some paper, and access to a decrepit piano, he composed the Quartet for the available instruments (clarinet, violin, cello, piano), within which The Abyss of the Birds was the only solo, written for Akoka. It symbolizes the contrast between the agonizing weight of temporal time, and the jubilant, eternal freedom of nature, and explores the extremes of the clarinet's sonic capabilities—some crescendos so painfully loud as to represent immense psychological pain., Milne's performance was a delight.

The classically trained, Afro-American Jessie Montgomery (b.1981) is famous for combining classical music with R&B, jazz, hip-hop, and poetical references, improvisation, and Black folk elements, to explore themes of social consciousness and community. She wrote Rhapsody No. 1 for violin (2014) for herself to play, intended to be part of set of six violin solos that paid homage to historic solo traditions, especially of J. S. Bach and Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931).

Jessie Montgomery.

She transposed it for the viola (2021)—here played by Leonard—as part of a project featuring various solo voices across different instrumental families, and also to expand the viola's solo repertoire. Although it is heavily inspired by Ysaÿe, that is not the whole story: Montgomery integrates blues harmonies and rhythms, and the improvisatory feel of Afro-American vernacular music. Leonard gave a very impressive performance.

Sheridan Seyfried.

Finally, in this long and highly varied program, came the Con spirito finale of the Sextet (2010), in three movements, for clarinet, piano, and string quartet by Sheridan Seyfried (born 1984 in Philadelphia). His music combines elements of Celtic and American folk music, blues, bluegrass, and New Age and, although not Jewish, he is deeply involved in the Jewish community, for which he wrote his cantata The Voices of the Holocaust. His music is highly approachable—vibrant, with easy-to-follow melodies. This finale gave each player moments to shine, and they did! Plaudits to them, and to Jim Eninger for his video, and for hosting the talented Thornton players.

 

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Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Reform Church, Sunday, May 10, 2026, 2:00 p.m.

Images: The performers: Classical Crossroads, Inc.; Roustom, Golijov, Montgomery, Seyfried: Composers' websites; Hubay, Schumann, Messiaen: Wikimedia Commons; Andrew Edwards: Instagram.

Mendelssohn and Fauré Masterworks in the Dome

REVIEW

“Piano & Strings,” Mount Wilson Observatory

JOHN STODDER

On the penultimate Sunday in May, in the 100-inch Telescope Dome at the Mount Wilson Observatory—5,713 ft. above sea level and 50 miles away from Walt Disney Concert Hall—two sold-out programs of classical music showcased a contrasting pair of masterpieces of 19th century chamber music, Felix Mendelssohn’s outgoing and melodic Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49 (1839), and Gabriel Fauré’s brooding and unpredictable Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15 (1876).

Each show had about 215 audience members, because that’s all that will fit in the unusual semicircular balcony space the Observatory offers for performances—each had a waiting list of 25 more people who would’ve attended. The organizers of this annual summer Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome series, including Artistic Director Cécilia Tsan (who performed in both pieces) have struck gold artistically as well as experientially. If the Observatory wasn’t so far from LA’s urban enclaves, I suspect the demand for tickets would be overwhelming.

The 100-inch Hooker Telescope Dome.

To get to the Dome, you need to find your way to the Angeles Crest Highway turnoff from the Foothill Freeway, ascending the San Gabriel Mountain range for about 14 winding miles until reaching Mount Wilson Red Box Road, a narrow, twisting five-mile path that climbs to the Observatory.

I’m used to this landscape looking more desert-like even in late spring, but the soaking winter rains allowed the native chapparal, trees, grasses, and wildflowers to thrive colorfully across the foothills and peaks—deep green foliage, bright yellow wildflowers, and the fragrance of pine that followed us to our seats in the Dome (right). The journey turned out to be the perfect overture for the concert, especially the first piece performed, the Mendelssohn Trio—so carefree and sweet, like the arrival of spring.

The audience heard two virtuoso violinists: Asi Matathias, an Israeli musician who helmed the Mendelssohn, and Tosca Opdam, his Dutch spouse who led the Fauré. They had travelled to Southern California from Europe and in both pieces were joined by cellist Cécilia Tsan and pianist Zachary Deak, with violist Carson Rick added for the Fauré.

The musicians got a boost from the Observatory, which displayed ideal acoustics for chamber music. Reverberant yet crisp. Precise yet powerful. Little did the architects and builders of the Dome know that, in addition to helping humanity explore the mysteries of the universe, they were building the perfect vessel for a chamber music concert.

The piano, a refurbished 1907 vintage Steinway (the same year the 100-inch mirror at the base of the Hooker Telescope (above) was cast in France, according to the helpful pre-show introduction by Mount Wilson Institute COO Dan Kohne) had a shimmering gorgeousness, while the strings filled the space with silken, sweet-sounding tones.

Felix Mendelssohn, 1837.

The Mendelssohn was the perfect music to greet an audience that had just passed through the verdant, craggy highlands of Southern California and witnessed the famous “illusion of the Dome” that fooled even Albert Einstein—from the platform it looks as if the Telescope itself is turning, but it’s really the whole Dome on its 109-year-old but amazingly smooth bearings, bearings that had to track the distant universe for 16-hour photographic exposures.

Felix Mendelssohn’s First Piano Trio feels as romantic as Beethoven, but as exquisitely balanced as Mozart, to whom Robert Schumann compared Mendelssohn. It is one of the most magical of romantic chamber music masterpieces, one that, over the course of its four movements, delineates a person’s consciousness of love—the commotion of longing in the first movement (Molto allegro ed agitato), the tenderness of felt love in the second (Andante con moto tranquillo), the delight of passion in the Leggiero e vivace Scherzo, and the triumphant power of a new attachment in the Allegro assai appassionato finale.

Asi Matathias, Zachary Deak, and Cécilia Tsan.

The trio’s virtuosity was most on display in the breathless Scherzo, with Deak and the unit of two strings tossing joyful phrases back and forth, sometimes echoing, sometimes answering, keeping pace with each other as they raced downhill. Many Americans are experiencing bouts of despair at the damaging national and international developments of this moment in time. All the more reason to absorb Mendelssohn’s insightful, sincere statement of appreciation for what is joyful and good about being alive; with the added excitement of watching such passionate musicians proclaim it literally to the heavens.

Gabriel Fauré, by John Singer Sargent.

The joy Mendelssohn so successfully depicted goes behind dark clouds in Fauré’s First Piano Quartet, which followed the Mendelssohn without intermission—instead, there was just a pause to reconfigure the platform to include violist Carson Rick. Opdam, taking over the violinist’s chair, soon had a solo in the Allegro molto moderato first movement, following the opening section for all four players that sounded like someone pacing in a circle, ruminating, full of uncertainty.

Her solo extended the initial sense of imbalance, literally, in a passage full of unexpected, seemingly unnatural emphases, like someone struggling to put on their shoes after hearing a knock on the door. Quickly, the piano asserts control, straightens out the wrinkles, and begins presenting the movement’s melancholy themes more conventionally. It is a very talkative movement: we are hearing Faure’s side of an elusive but traumatic story.

The Scherzo that follows feels like a game of can’t-catch-me, with the musicians racing away from each other. It is whimsical but guarded, never letting the listener relax. A halt and shift of tone halfway through was so abrupt that audience members applauded, thinking the movement had ended. Its second half slows matters down slightly for a dialogue between the piano and strings that had elements of self-mockery in the voicings of the viola and cello. It is almost as if Fauré was signaling that the frolicking is fun but shouldn’t be trusted.

Tosca Opdam, Zachary Deak, Cécilia Tsan, and Carson Rick.

In the third movement Adagio, we heard a succession of unique textures melting into each other, with Opdam, Tsan and Rick peeling off for brief and solemn solo and duet statements, often accompanied by dreamy piano arpeggios. Cellist Tsan and violist Rick were frequently called upon to supply a growling sonic undercurrent, a river of dark tone created by their lowest strings being bowed hard and slowly. The sense of being chased by mysteries one doesn’t want to confront continued in the more formal, elegantly romantic, final Allegro molto, where Faure’s struggle reaches a stormy climax.

As the Faure’s final moment lingered under the Dome, I felt—and I’m sure most of the audience felt— that we had been on a journey from one form of strength to another: from Mendelssohn’s clarity about what is most beautiful in our existence, to Faure’s rational and devastating doubts, and his courage in illuminating uncertainty. Much for each of us to reflect on as we drove through the mountains again toward home on this perfect day. 

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100-inch Telescope Dome, Mount Wilson Observatory, Sunday, May 24, 2026, 3:00 p.m./5:00 p.m.

Images: The performance: Todd Mason; Landscape: John Stodder; Mendelssohn and Fauré: Wikimedia Commons.

John Alexander’s "Serenade to Music" at the Segerstrom

John Alexander conducts the Pacific Chorale and Pacific Symphony Orchestra in his "final, final" concert with them.

REVIEW

Pacific Chorale, Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa

DAVID J BROWN

“Never say never again” could have been the subtitle to this concert. When he retired in 2017 after 45 years as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Pacific Chorale, Prof. John Alexander stated firmly that his final appearance of that 2016-2017 season, in which he conducted Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony, would be his last on the Segerstrom Concert Hall’s podium. However… nearly a decade later, the Chorale’s present Music Director Dr. Robert Istad suggested that he could return once more to conduct their final concert of the 2025-2026 season and he agreed.

The program was to be entirely his choice, and how and why he came to make the selections he did (after acknowledging that his first preference, which would have been for Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts, was not possible on logistical grounds!) he explained in a fascinating conversation with his successor, fortunately preserved on YouTube.

It’s probably true to say that a choral/orchestral work has a smaller chance of being performed if it does not fill half, most, or all of an evening, as opposed to the many overtures, suites, and average-length concertos frequently played in purely orchestral concerts ahead of the big program-climaxing symphony. Alexander noted, however, that smaller choral works had always formed an essential part of his programming and here he had devised a sequence entirely of such pieces, with the overall aim of affirming how essential music is in life, coupled with poetry that expresses this.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1938.

His selection ranged over four centuries, but he began in 20th century England with the work whose title adumbrates this idea. Unsurprisingly, his account of Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music immediately confirmed his affinity with that composer—indeed, it made me sorry that I had not been around to hear that previous valedictory performance of the Sea Symphony, and indeed was now exceedingly unlikely to hear live any others of RVW’s choral masterworks (what price Sancta Civitas or the Five Tudor Portraits?).

His pliant shaping of the Serenade to Music’s substantial 30-measure orchestral introduction was rewarded with beautifully sensitive playing from the Pacific Symphony Orchestra—its string sections reduced by a desk or two as seems to be standard when performing with the Pacific Chorale—and radiant tone from Concertmaster Dennis Kim in the important solo violin part.

Vaughan Williams wrote his Serenade to Music in 1938 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sir Henry Wood’s London Promenade Concerts, scoring it for orchestra and 16 named soloists (4S-4A-4T-4B), with whom he recorded it. However, realizing that this was not the most practicable form for the piece in future performance, he made several arrangements: for chamber orchestra, for violin and orchestra, for choir and piano, and for choir (with or without SATB soloists) and orchestra. It was the latter which Maestro Alexander included, and it introduced the evening’s featured soloist, the soprano Elissa Johnston (right).

For a complete change of color and pace Alexander’s program moved to a pairing of his two Austrian favorites, Mozart from the 18th century and Bruckner from the 19th. If the Vaughan Williams had demonstrated the Pacific Chorale’s homogeneity and richness of tone, the last of Mozart’s three settings of Regina Coeli, K.276 (1779) showed that this large chorus could be just as unanimous and pungent in fast, dance-like music, swinging with jubilant relish into Mozart’s near quotes from Handel’s Hallelujah chorus. The work’s brief solo parts also gave moments in the sun for four Pacific Chorale members: Chelsea Chaves (soprano), I-Chin Betty Feinblatt (mezzo-soprano), Jason Francisco (tenor), and Michael Fagerstedt (bass).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1777.

Then we throttled right down for the fifth, Laudate Dominum, movement from Mozart’s Solemn Vespers, K.339 (1780), in which Ms. Johnston scaled back her ample vocal powers to match the exquisite intimacy of the setting, accompanied by reduced strings which expanded to full strength for the choral second half of the piece.

More often than not recordings of Anton Bruckner’s unaccompanied choral works are made by relatively small choirs, and the Pacific Chorale’s account of his Ave Maria, WAB 6 (1861)—the only one of his three settings of the Ave Maria that is a cappella—was a welcome reminder of the increased breadth of dynamic and timbre that you can only get from a really substantial body of voices.

Anton Bruckner, 1894.

Then their full power was unleashed in Bruckner’s setting of Psalm 150, WAB 38 (1892), his last completed work but one, and as compact as it is granitic and intricately detailed. Indeed in this performance I felt that a little more rehearsal would have helped to nail its complex interactions between chorus and orchestra.

However, it was a joy to hear this rarely-performed masterpiece, not only for the massive impact of chorus and orchestra but also the delicious interplay between solo violin and soprano in the central section—played and sung by Mr. Kim and Ms. Johnston respectively with consummate artistry—and the only possible regret at the end of this first half was that more was not heard of Christoph Bull’s featured organ role, confined as it was to accompanying the two Mozart pieces. Bruckner’s Te Deum instead of Psalm 150 would have filled that particular bill, but sadly would have bulked out the program to an unacceptable degree.

The second half opened with John Alexander being honored (above) by Pacific Chorale Board Chair Julie Virjee with the title of Artistic Director Laureate, after which he took to the podium again to direct his next choice, Brahms’ Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), Op.54 (1868-71).

Johannes Brahms, 1869.

Here the chorus and orchestra were as dreamily concordant in the first section—Brahms’ Langsam und sehnsuehtsvoll (Slow and wistful) evocation of Hölderlin’s vision of the “blessed spirits”’ celestial calm—as they were trenchant in the succeeding turbulent depiction of human suffering: nothing here of the slight uncertainty of ensemble that to my ears had been present in Psalm 150. The composer’s inspired orchestra-only postlude, recapitulating the work’s opening, was perfectly paced by the Pacific Symphony under Maestro Alexander.

John Alexander grouped the last three items of his "Serenade to Music" program together as the finale to what he had characterized in his conversation with Dr. Istad as a kind of “meta-symphony,” and indeed asked the audience to refrain from applause between each (would that more conductors would make that request for multi-movement works in any genre!).

Lili Boulanger, Rome, 1914.

At first sight the pairing of Lili Boulanger’s Soir sur la plaine (Evening on the plain)—with which in 1913 she became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome—with works composed nearly a century later by Frank Ticheli (b.1958) and Jake Heggie (b.1961), might have seemed a stretch, but the connection between them lay in performance history by the Pacific Chorale and Alexander as he had, in 2000, conducted the first performance of the newly edited original choral/orchestral version of the piece, as well as many by the two Americans.

The present account of Soir sur la plaine reaffirmed—if that were needed given the extent to which her genius has at last been recognized—that Boulanger’s ear for instrumental and vocal color, and harmonic richness and subtlety, was quite equal to that of her great French compatriots Debussy and Ravel. What she might have achieved had she lived beyond the age of 24 beggars imagination. As it was, the acutely sensitive and atmospheric performance of it by the Pacific Symphony and Chorale—joined again by Elissa Johnston and two more Chorale members, Jane Hyun-Jung Shim and Daniel Coy Babcock—was arguably the high point of the whole concert.

Frank Ticheli.

Ticheli’s There Will be Stars (2009) was the second a cappella work of the evening, its soft harmonic clashes and gently aspiring tranquility as rendered by the Pacific Chorale underlining the point about the singular qualities of a big chorus unaccompanied. It was brief enough to make one regret that the two even shorter movements that precede it, forming the triptych Constellation, could not have been included so as to place it in the context of the complete work.

Jake Heggie.

Finally, and expressively poles apart, came Jake Heggie’s Seeking Higher Ground: Bruce Springsteen Rocks New Orleans, April 30, 2006, which Pacific Chorale had commissioned for the opening of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in 2006, the year following New Orleans’ Hurricane Katrina disaster.

For ideas Heggie had turned to his collaborator Sister Helen Prejean, librettist for his opera Dead Man Walking, who had lived through Katrina and its aftermath in the city. Despite the tragedy, it had been decided to press ahead with the 2006 New Orleans Jazz Festival, at which Bruce Springsteen performed (hence Heggie’s work’s subtitle) and the event became a defining moment in the city’s recovery.

Seeking Higher Ground adumbrates both the immediate horror of Katrina and the regenerative power of music via that Festival. In its sense of urgent engagement with contemporary tragedy, it brought to mind Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, an impression strengthened by both works’ resort to spirituals in their aspirational language. Fervently sung and played, it brought this celebratory event to a powerful end, and Maestro Alexander and his combined forces were greeted with a prolonged and cheering ovation. 

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Pacific Chorale, Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa, 7pm, Saturday, May 23, 2026.

Images: The performance: Jamie Pham; Vaughan Williams: Howard Coster, © National Portrait Gallery; Mozart, Bruckner, Brahms: Wikimedia Commons; Boulanger: Musée de la Musique, Philharmonie de Paris; Ticheli, Heggie: composers' websites.

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A Scintillating Mason House Season Finale

Tosca Opdam and Asi Matathias, violins, with Alin Melik-Adamyan (hidden) at the keyboard,
play Moritz Moszkowski’s Suite for Two Violins and Piano at Mason House.

REVIEW

Tosca Opdam and Friends play Moszkowski and Dvořák at Mason House

DAVID J BROWN

Two of the 19th century’s most luxuriantly-mustachioed compositional neglectees came out of the shadows during this year’s Mason House concerts. Back in April we had Ludwig Thuille’s Sextet for Piano and Woodwind Quintet, Op. 6 (reviewed here by John Stodder), and in the final concert of this 12th season of what is surely LA’s most intimate, impactful and welcoming chamber music series there was the Suite for Two Violins and Piano, Op. 71, by Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925).

Moritz Moskowski.

Moszkowski’s Wikipedia page describes him as “a German-Polish composer, pianist, and teacher,” but his principal fame in life seems to have been as a performer and—as Dr. Kristi Brown-Montesano noted in her, as ever, witty and informative pre-concert talk—when illness necessitated his withdrawal from the concert platform, his star went into a permanent and ultimately tragic decline. Once rich and famous, he became mostly forgotten and destitute, the proceeds of a testimonial concert organized by friends and admirers failing to reach him before his death from stomach cancer.

However, Moszkowski was a composer of real substance. Some of his prolific output of solo piano pieces have kept his name modestly present in recital programs, but it’s only in recent years—mainly via the British record companies Toccata Classics and Hyperion—that his orchestral works have surfaced, mostly hugely enjoyable… and some also, frankly, really huge. Between these extremes, though, Moszkowski seems to have had little time for multi-movement chamber works which, if this performance of the Suite—a relatively late piece dating from 1903—was anything to go by, is a pity.

In the hands of the virtuoso spousal violinists Tosca Opdam (right, who has recorded host Todd Mason’s Violin Concerto) and Asi Matathias, visiting from their home in Amsterdam, and LA-based pianist Alin Melik-Adamyan, the Suite’s opening Allegro energico erupted from the starting-gate in a galvanizing display of unanimity and passion that continued to surge through the entire concise movement, dominated as it is by its exuberantly tumbling, many-time-repeated main theme.

The Suite has none of the prolixity that makes some of Moszkowski’s early orchestral works threaten to outstay their welcome. The second movement was a sweetly beguiling Allegro moderato replacing what would be the scherzo if the work aspired to sonata status, followed by a brief, romantic Lento assai. Then, to usher in the finale, a boogie-woogie piano intro led to a whirl of duetting and motifs being tossed back and forth between the violins before a presto coda for all three instruments brought this delicious discovery to an audience-cheering end.

After the interval—as always, not as brief as the host Todd Mason requested due to the conviviality fueled by resident caterer Ethel Phipps’ delicious food—it was back for the second half, again a single work, and this time Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81, in which Opdam, Matathias, and Melik-Adamyan were joined by two luminaries from LA’s illustrious musical community—both familiar from previous Mason House recitals—Carson Rick (viola), and Cécilia Tsan (cello).

Dvořák was as prodigious in his output of chamber music as Moszkowski was parsimonious, and amongst this richly varied landscape of works the Second Piano Quintet, written in 1887 between the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, stands as a peak in its memorability, breadth and variety of expression, second only perhaps to the magisterial Piano Trio No. 3 in F minor.

Antonin Dvořák, 1882.

By now it was only reasonable to anticipate that this would be an exceptional performance, but even so the sheer coherence and unanimity of this group of five performers, who sounded as if they had been playing together for years rather than having come together for the first time for this evening, was quite remarkable.

If there was a regret, it was that they omitted to make the marked first movement exposition repeat, if only because it deprived us of hearing for a second time the fathoms-deep richness of Ms. Tsan’s cello as, over a gently rocking piano accompaniment, the solo instrument lays out Dvořák’s spacious and deeply felt opening theme—the immediate juxtaposition of which with vigorous action from all five instruments immediately making clear the range of expressive territory that the work will explore.

“Tosca Opdam and friends” indeed proved masters of every mood and motion within this masterpiece. Their playing of the second, Dumka, movement—an extraordinarily original structure that is so much more than just a “slow movement”—encompassed every facet of its elaboration and many changes of pace. Dvořák’s masterly sense of proportion doesn’t fail him, with the latter two movements notably concise after the complexity of their predecessors. The Scherzo (Furiant) was as fleet and airborne as anyone could wish, and the group had ample energy left for the vigorous Allegro finale.

l-r: Todd Mason, Alin Melik-Adamyan, Tosca Opdam, Asi Matathias, Cécilia Tsan, Carson Rick.

This rivetingly engaged performance of the great work was hailed by everyone in Mason’s packed concert room, and it was good to be reminded that Tosca Opdam, Asi Matathias, Carson Rick and Cécilia Tsan, together with pianist Zachary Deak, could be heard again in a week’s time at the first of this year’s “Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome” at Mount Wilson Observatory, the series as ever under Ms. Tsan's curatorship as Artistic Director.

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Mason House Concert, 3484 Redwood Ave., Mar Vista, CA 90066, 6:00 p.m., Saturday, May 16, 2026.

Images: The performance: Todd Mason; Moszkowski and Dvořák: Wikimedia Commons.

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