Season to Open on Challenging Note

As one of the world’s few women maestros, Long Beach Symphony Orchestra conductor JoAnn Falletta is breaking ground in a field that has been dominated by men for centuries. Within those traditional ranks, she is a maverick, challenging audiences with new American music while maintaining a repertoire of European standard bearers.

The new classical season, which opens Saturday, is pure Falletta. Mahler’s traditional, romantic Symphony No. 1 shares billing with American composer John Adams’ “Short Ride in a Fast Machine,” a controversial, minimalist piece that challenges the audience’s perception of technology.

While today’s audiences love turn-of-the-century Mahler, they often flinch at the minimal dissonance of Adams’ pieces. Adams, in the tradition of Philip Glass, represents a “style of music (that) could not be more American,” New Yorker magazine reports. “It comes from minimalism, which comes from California and from rock.”

The Long Beach Symphony will perform an Adams piece that challenges the audience to “question technology,” Falletta said. “Technological advances have given us the life we have now, but the work asks also: ‘Maybe there’s something more, something missing as a consequence.’ ”

Although Mahler and Adams seem widely different, they have more in common than not, Falletta said.

“At the turn of the century, Mahler’s music was totally rejected,” she said. “Audiences couldn’t relate to it. It talks about dismantling the old way of life, about the destruction of the old world and building a new world in its place. Our generation identifies with Mahler. Out of the ashes of the old order was built the new order, what we’re a part of now.

“Adams’ work, on the other hand, makes us uncomfortable. Maybe that’s because it’s telling us something about our life that we need to know. My role is to open doors. It may hurt a little, but that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

Mahler aficionados note that Falletta will conduct Mahler’s complete Symphony No. 1 in D Major, including the often neglected Blumine movement. Saturday evening’s program also includes Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22, with guest pianist Jose Feghali, a gold medal winner at the seventh Van Cliburn Piano Competition in 1985 and current artist-in-residence at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth.

The concert will begin at 8 p.m. in the Terrace Theater of the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd. As is her custom, Falletta will hold a preconcert discussion of the music and its composers at 7 p.m. Tickets range from $18 to $30. For more symphony information, call 436-3203.