Summer Lingers as Philharmonic Closes a Season

The lack of well-defined seasons in Southern California is never more disconcerting than in the transition between summer and fall, usually the hottest time of the year. In the musical world, that blur is stronger than ever right now. Los Angeles Opera began its new season last week; meanwhile, the Hollywood Bowl still rolls along, prolonging the musical summer through September.

And when the Los Angeles Philharmonic waved farewell to another season at the Bowl Thursday night, it did so with the lingering theme of summer. The main piece of an evening of French music was Berlioz’s orchestral song cycle, “Les Nuits d’Ete” (Summer Nights).

To add to seasonal confusion, a morbid chill runs through these songs of love and loss, and the air temperature dropped noticeably as Susan Graham sang them. As well it should. Who thinks of languid summer hearing the extraordinary imagery of Theophile Gautier’s text in the second song, “Spectre of the Rose”? In revenge, the spirit of that plucked flower comes back to haunt the young girl who wore its tomb, so to speak, on her alabaster breast at the ball.

Graham is one of the most impressive of the many impressive mezzo-sopranos on the scene today. Her voice is as dark, deep, rich and powerful as a contralto’s, but it also has a shining silvery ring on top. She has made her name, in part, as an All-American, recording the songs of Ned Rorem and creating operatic roles in John Harbison’s “Great Gatsby” and Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking.” Yet she is also a deserved star in Classical period operas by Mozart and Gluck, while being equally celebrated for her Berlioz, from the Romantic era. Her latest CD is of little known and irresistible arias from French operetta.

Despite a few uncharacteristically rough moments at the Bowl Thursday, Graham brought a sumptuous fullness to “Nuit d’Ete,” more forceful than sensual, and she was supported in this approach by a weighty orchestra sound enforced by the Israeli conductor Asher Fisch, making his Philharmonic debut. Tempos were often on the slow side, poetic drama was heavily emphasized, climaxes exaggerated, but still with the necessary waft of sonic French perfume.

Then, changing gown and temperament after intermission, she returned in spangles and purple boa for three sassy feminist Parisian operetta numbers. In the dazzler, by the early 20th century Cuban expatriate, Moises Simons, Carmen kills Escamillo. Fisch doesn’t have quite the light touch of Yves Abel, who accompanies Graham on her marvelous new CD, but he showed a sense of humor nonetheless. (An evening’s worth of these numbers could make for an unforgettable Bowl program.)

The program was filled out by Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini” Overture and Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” The overture had the usual added soundtrack to pieces that open a concert at the Bowl: the clack of latecomers, the tinkle of persevering diners, and the dogged insistence of bill-collecting waiters, at times louder than the soft theme in the basses. But Fisch is a determined conductor, again more Wagnerian than Berliozian, and he found the Philharmonic, in its first week back from a European tour, tightly focused.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” on the other hand, closed the program with a terrific impact. Dukas’ brief symphonic poem is often ignored these days, perhaps forever lost to Mickey in “Fantasia.” It is, in fact, brilliant music, original in its orchestral technique and harmonic language; Fisch and the Philharmonic made a splendid splash with it.

Graham’s encore was an obscure sentimental American song, “Bless This House,” written 75 years ago but newly and mawkishly orchestrated. She meant it as a patriotic gesture and sang it with commanding emotion. However sincere, it came across peculiarly heavy-handed, as if we were served an over-syruped, sobering cola nightcap after the delectable champagne of sophisticated French music.