Mehta and the IPO please San Diego concert goers

By Eileen Wingard

SAN DIEGO — The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra presented an all-orchestral program in San Diego’s Civic Theatre  Nov. 12 under its venerable Conductor-for-Life, Zubin Mehta. The concert began with the playing of the two anthems, The Star Spangled Banner and Hatikvah. The latter, which featured the IPO’s glorious string section, brought tears to the eyes of many in the audience as they sang along.

The program’s opener was a work by Georgian-born Israeli composer, Josef Bardanashvili, a twenty-minute symphonic poem with material gleaned from his opera, A Journey to the End of the Millennium. The libretto was about a Jewish merchant from Tangiers who decides to take a second wife. He has legal problems while on a business trip to Paris. His second wife wants to be free to take a second husband.  The opera resolves with her suicide.

The symphonic poem is episodic, beginning with single harmonic notes in the viola and joined by the flute. That same instrumentation concludes the work, giving it a sense of unity. Near the beginning, the horns have a swooping passage, reminiscent of one of the Shofar calls on Rosh Hashana. There is a loud barbaric dance section and later, folkloric dance sequences which seemed influenced by his fellow Georgian composer, Aram Khatchaturian. There are flute passages and solo string sections which evoke the pastoral life of shepherds. One flute solo, of pure beauty, probably depicting a love scene in the opera, is soon joined by another woodwind, commenting in a different key, as if to remind us, before we get too complacent with the lovely melody, that the work is by a contemporary composer, who uses large doses of dissonance and multi-tonality. The work reflects Bardanashvili’s excellent command of orchestration. In addition to the usual complement of orchestral instruments, his score includes a harp, piano and synthesizer.

Ravel’s La valse, that remarkable piece, with reflections on Viennese waltzes, first with subtle glimpses, then, as a gathering storm, propelled to a frenzied, hysterical climax, concluded the first half of the program.

After intermission, Mehta led his Israeli forces in a well-paced rendition of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.  Now, the 79-year-old maestro is the royal patriarch of conductors, rather than the animated 25-year-old prince I recall when he first wielded his baton with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Particularly impressive were the Eroica’s fugue passages in the first, third and last movements, characterized by strongly delineated entrances, contributing to the symphony’s heroic grandeur. Mehta conducted like a king, with restraint and in full command. He is, after all, the Conductor for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra with which he has a symbiotic relationship.

Many in the audience were not regular concert goers and came because the IPO is Israel’s foremost ambassador of good will. New audience is always easy to detect, because those are people who are not aware of the custom of refraining from applause between movements of a single work, such as a symphony.

Hopefully, it was a happy experience and they will return to attend performances of our local institutions, such as the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, the San Diego Opera Company and the many offerings of the La Jolla Music Society.

The IPO came to San Diego from a two night stint in Beverly Hills and left the next morning for Chicago. No one was allowed back stage, security was tight. Next day, with the killings in Paris at a soccer stadium, a concert hall and several restaurants, we were cruelly reminded once again, of our vulnerability in the free world.

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Wingard is a freelance writer and a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony.  She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com  Any comments in the space below should include the writer’s full name and city and state of residence, or city and country for non-U.S. residents.