October 11, 2014  Go big or go home, as the kids say. The San Antonio Symphony opened its 75th classical subscription season, and its first in the new Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, with one of the biggest works in the repertoire, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.”   Big but not fat. It was all lean muscle in music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing’s fleet, tautly conceived account, handsomely executed by the enormous orchestra, the Mastersingers chorus, mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and soprano Nadine Sierra. The orchestra and the women of the Mastersingers opened the concert with the first of the season’s 14 brief commissioned works, Randall Meyers’s “Simplexity Prelude.” The “Resurrection” of the Mahler symphony’s title does not refer to any specifically religious event, but rather to the universal human experiences and aspirations that underlie the religious impulse. Like the other early symphonies that Mahler composed under the influence of the “Youth’s Magic Horn” German folk poems, and his own collection of orchestrated songs on some of those texts, the Symphony No. 2 is a study in paradoxes. It acknowledges the Hobbesian view that human life in the state of nature is nasty, brutish and short, but it recognizes that human life can also be glorious, tender and everlasting. This symphony encompasses the extremes of violent tumult and sweet peace, stark terror and transcendent joy, a world ripped asunder and a world healed by love. Sometimes they are woven together, as they are in life.  Spoiler alert: Peace, joy and love win.  Mr. Lang-Lessing has demonstrated a keen understanding of Mahler on several occasions. He opened his tenure with this orchestra in 2010 with the First Symphony. He closed the 2012-13 season with the vast Third, and he closed last season (the orchestra’s final season in residence at the Majestic Theater) with the Fifth. For all the splendors of those performances — marvelously effective tempo relations, rhythmic acuity, carefully sculpted details — the Majestic’s dry and harsh acoustics always seemed to put a barrier btween the music and the listener.  Although Mr. Lang-Lessing and the orchestra are still in the early stages of adjustment to the Tobin’s H-E-B Performance Hall (and vice-versa, perhaps), some of what was missing from previous Mahler  performances became clear in this one — especially the conductor’s care with voicings, shifting the focus from one section to another as the music warrants, and his subtle gradations of dynamics. There was more of a frisson in the big brassy climaxes, more of a halo around the woodwinds.  Conditions were still not ideal: The need to accommodate the chorus pushed the orchestra forward. Most of the violins were sitting ahead of the proscenium and outside the orchestra shell, on a pit lift raised to stage level for this concert. Thus the violins, despite being boosted slightly in number,  often sounded thinner than they normally would. (Brief preconcert remarks by clarinetist Stephanie Key, standing in front and speaking without a microphone, could hardly be heard at all.)   But the forward position of the orchestra, together with the massed chorus at the back of the shell, mitigated the brightness that was apparent in the sound for the Renée Fleming concert on Sept. 20, so the overall frequency response was remarkably even. The pivoting reflector panel, just ahead of the proscenium, was tilted for this concert and may have helped project the sound better — it had been set parallel to the stage for the Sept. 20 concert. From my seat on the fourth row of the mezzanine the sound was still a little cool and with little feeling of envelopment, but leaning forward as much as possible revealed a more engaging and open sound, suggesting that the balcony overhang causes a drop-off beyond the third row.  In some ways, the new hall performed like a champion: The Tobin is Christmas, Hanukkah and Eid for the Masteringers, prepared by John Silantien; the chorus has never before sounded so full and rich.  The offstage brass and percussion sounded properly distant, as Mahler wanted, but also seemed to surround the listener. Instrumental timbres were faithfully projected. The cello section’s pizzicati had lots of presence, and the double-basses projected cleanly, though a few of their notes sounded boomy (a problem that probably can be easily addressed with a slight change in geography.) Silent air handling allowed the faintest  pianissimi to glow.  The two vocal soloists, singing from a position behind the violas, projected beautifully and rode easily above the orchestra. Ms. O’Connor’s radiant instrument and sensitivity to the text — its progression from despair to ecstasy — were deeply pleasurable in “Urlicht” (lovingly shaped by Mr. Lang-Lessing), as was Ms. Sierra’s consoling warmth and gleaming high register in the finale.  As the title of Mr. Meyers’s “Simplexity Prelude” suggests, the work explores the  interweaving of opposite ideas — on the one hand, busy, spiky, bubbling and earthy; on the other,  calm, atmospheric and ethereal. The piece packs a lot of music into a scant few minutes. Both the composition and the performance were masterfully made.  Mike Greenberg

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Nadine SierraPhoto: Kristin Hoebermann

Kelley O’ConnorPhoto: Zachary Maxwell Stertz

Randall MeyersPhoto: Massimo Menghini

San Antonio Symphony, Mastersingers, Lang-Lessing

In Mahler’s ‘Resurrection,’ life in its extremes

incident light

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