Idyllwild’s Youthful Players Boldly Tackle Mahler’s Fifth

Summer is drawing to a close, a seasonal clenching motion that can be sensed in the onset of academic consciousness--and the end of summer music programs. Among them, to the south, is the widely respected Idyllwild Arts Summer Program, which is celebrating a half-century in action this year.

So when the Idyllwild Festival Orchestra capped off its summer studies with a concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall Sunday night, it was only fitting that the young, promising charges take on something suitably challenging. Mahler’s Fifth served the purpose just fine, with its diversely drawn sprawl, dynamic extremes and its big-picture thinking.

Conductor Larry J. Livingston (dean of the USC Thornton School of Music), in charge of this orchestra for the past 11 years, worked effectively with the youthful orchestra, getting the score into admirable shape over the past two weeks (extravagant preparation time by professional standards). Conducting without a score on Sunday, Livingston drew out fine checks and balances in terms of dynamics and texture. If the sound wasn’t always subtle and seamless, a bit coarse in the transitions, the rawness of expression complemented the material.

In any decent performance, and this was better than most, the music itself is a big, satisfying meal of a piece, working its way from the darkness of its funereal first movement--all bombast and rumination--to the almost fit-to-burst blitheness of the final Rondo. In between come the stirring bittersweet “love letter” of the Adagietto, concurrently joyful and neurotic, and the Scherzo’s affirmative waltz-time swagger.

To these mercurial emotions, the orchestra brought the right stuff. It delivered a big, bold Mahlerian sound, knowing beyond its collective years. The subtext of the concert was that, while classical music culture may face an uncertain future, the ranks of budding, serious classical musicians seems in very good supply.