MUSIC REVIEW : Talmi’s Touch on Symphony Shows

Marshaling the forces of an augmented San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Master Chorale, music director Yoav Talmi brought Gustav Mahler’s long-awaited Second Symphony (“Resurrection”) to Copley Symphony Hall Friday night. Talmi and company did not disappoint. As the maestro demonstrated in a performance of the Anton Bruckner Seventh Symphony earlier in the season, he knows how to transform a sprawling musical score into a riveting emotional journey.

Talmi wisely chose to limit the evening’s program to the Mahler symphony. At just under 90 minutes in length, the five-movement Second Symphony constructs its own musical galaxy. It needs neither prelude nor postlude.

Talmi mined the symphony’s profundities with a steady hand, indulging its emotional outbursts without histrionics. Equal to the conductor’s incisive, exquisitely detailed concept of the work were the orchestra’s consistently resplendent tone and cohesive ensemble. From the second movement’s sunny lilt to the finale’s apocalyptic anguish and eventual sublime exaltation, the orchestral palette faithfully mirrored the composer’s every metamorphosis.

The orchestra’s precision and fine tuning were so remarkable that, when the offstage horns entered slightly under pitch in the fifth movement, it was as distressing as a batter who spoils a no-hitter with a bunt single in the ninth inning.

Although the (on stage) brass displayed their customary majestic sonority in the chorale-like sections, this reviewer cannot remember a time in the last decade when the violins have sounded so sweet and impeccably focused. As Talmi completes his first season as music director, the harmonious partnership between conductor and orchestra is already paying generous musical dividends.

In the fourth movement’s otherworldly “Urlicht,” mezzo-soprano Donna Bruno floated her burnished, graceful phrases in complete sympathy with the composer’s expansive vocal style. Her velvety lower range and immaculate diction made her an ideal choice for the assignment. Soprano Michal Shamir, however, hovered demurely in the shadow of the chorus, and when she should have soared grandly, her slender voice seemed to evaporate.

The Master Chorale sat patiently behind the orchestra for the greater part of the evening, waiting for its moment of glory at the end of the last movement. But when its time came, the chorus entered with a ravishing pianissimo “Aufersteh’n” on command. Solidly balanced and responsive, the chorus merged with the orchestra in a compelling finale that nobly conveyed Mahler’s convictions about immortality won through earthly struggle.

This concert will be broadcast at 3:30 p.m. next Sunday on KNSD-TV (Channel 39).