Music Reviews : West Coast Debut for Frankfurt Radio Symphony

Just when Mahler seemed pegged as a composer of expansive personal expression, along comes conductor Eliahu Inbal and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony to offer a cooler, post-War approach to his music.

In their only West Coast appearances, Inbal and his forces played Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (with soprano Arleen Auger) on Friday and his Sixth Symphony on Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. The concerts were sponsored by the Philharmonic Society.

It is easy to say what Inbal’s Mahler was not.

It was not heart tugging, it was not yearning, it was not neurotic. There was no schmaltz, no exaggeration, no burlesque, no caricature, no grotesquerie, no vulgarity.

There were few untoward accents, impolite sounds, or growling and snarling. There was little spectral radiance, soul wrenching or heaven storming.

There was, heaven help us, no Gemutlichkeit .

Some Mahlerites would say that you can’t take all that away and still be left with Mahler.

But wait. Inbal offered thought-provoking compensations and made a compelling case for Mahler as a symphony fabricator, not as an Angst -driven hero writing symphonic autobiographies.

Inbal conducted with a grasp of deep structural significance and proportion. Elements that others delight in contrasting, Inbal knit into a tightly cohesive fabric.

The results were an attention to detail and seldom-heard clarity, openness and balance among elements in both symphonies, different as they are. In the Fourth, one could appreciate Mahler as an orchestral colorist and a master contrapuntalist; in the Sixth, as an Olympian dramatist.

All this did not mitigate against spontaneity, drive and cumulative impact. The conductor also managed to spring a few surprises, as when in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony he directed the sudden plunge into a vortex with precision and inevitability.

And even though he refused to dawdle over the ethereal theme in the Andante of the Sixth Symphony--rolling out, instead, steady, arching lines where surely the composer wanted some lingering and sensitive use of rubato--he developed the movement with some fist-shaking logic.

The orchestra played with mighty force and whispering pianissimos, and demonstrated model discipline and coordination.

It did not, however, boast a contingent of rich, lush string playing, and the dry string tone was not ideal for Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole,” which opened the program on Friday.

But Inbal provided splendid accompaniment for Auger in Ravel’s “Sheherazade,” who sang with her customary warmth, intelligence and taste. The soprano responded to the poems by Tristan Klingor (a.k.a. Leon Leclere) with kaleidoscopic colors and subtle inflections, with urgency, delicate yearning, flirtation and regret.

In the final movement of the Fourth Symphony, the native Angelina sang with innocent fervor and joy, with aching tenderness and purity.

Walter Brunner provided sensitive solo work in “La Flute Enchantee.” Oboist Fabian Menzel and guest concertmaster Werner Grobholz impressed with their solos in the Fourth Symphony.