Symphony review: Mechetti displays dazzling new skillset in concerts with the Spokane Symphony

This weekend, the Spokane Symphony welcomed to the podium Fabio Mechetti, who led the orchestra as music drector and principal conductor from 1993 to 2004 and who played an essential role in the purchase and renovation of their present home at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox.

During his tenure as music director, Mechetti helped the orchestra ascend from a level of professional competence to one of outstanding flexibility, virtuosity and scope – qualities that were much in evidence in these concerts.

Also in evidence were the distinctive attributes familiar to all of those in the audience who heard him while he was at the orchestra’s helm, along with some that he has acquired and perfected in the nearly 20 years since. During this period, he has conducted all over the world, and was ultimately given an opportunity to create an orchestra hand-picked after auditions on three continents, the Minas Gerais Philharmonic in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Mechetti’s home country. He has always been notable for the unique warmth and color he imparted to his performances, even in works seldom associated with these qualities, such as the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. He did this by applying his astounding natural gifts of memory (he led this weekend’s complex program without a score) and aural acuity, which enables him to detect minute errors of intonation and timing while the orchestra is in full cry and quietly correct them later.

From the first bars of the Overture to “Il Guarany” (1869) by Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Gomes, one could hear how Mechetti’s art has advanced. While the overture to Gomes’ little-known opera contains some delightful melodies and a distinctive harmonic imagination, its construction lacks the cohesiveness one finds in the overtures of Giuseppe Verdi which served as Gomes’ primary source of inspiration.

In the hands of lesser conductors, this overture breaks apart into a pile of disjointed episodes. As we heard it from Mechetti and the Spokane Symphony, however, it was tight, cohesive and compelling, thanks to three skills brought to it by the conductor. The first is a uniform beauty of sound from every choir of the orchestra. The second is a superfine control over dynamic shading, which shapes every phrase and links them together into sentences and paragraphs that convey meaning with the clarity and vividness of spoken language. Finally, the sense of forward motion gives shape to the whole of the piece, so that even so fragile a construct as the Overture to “Il Guarany” can make a considerable impact and remain alive in memory.

Just imagine, then, what these qualities can achieve when applied to works of real genius, such as the excerpts of Richard Wagner’s masterpiece, “Die Meistersinger von Nurnburg” (1868). Wagner set down principles of artistic excellence that Mechetti and the orchestra matched exactly: absolute equality and interdependence of every aspect of a performance, and the clear and natural progression of a musical/dramatic idea from its first fragmentary appearance to its final cosmic expression. Mechetti’s ability to execute this through the orchestra resulted in Wagnerian playing that was joyous, compelling, and, with the final resolution to glorious C major at the conclusion of the Prelude to “Die Meistersinger,” absolutely thrilling.

Born at about the time (1864) Wagner began work on “Die Meistersinger,” Richard Strauss set himself quite deliberately the task of continuing and advancing the master’s revolutionary innovations in harmony, musical theater and orchestral writing. Strauss, however, did not confine himself entirely to writing operas, as Wagner did. He expanded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams the dimensions of the tone-poem, developed by Franz Liszt and inspired by the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven. Strauss’s tone-poem “Don Juan” took the musical world by storm in 1889, due to its melodic richness, its narrative power and brilliance of orchestration. The orchestral parts are notoriously difficult.

At Saturday’s performance of “Don Juan,” however, we heard no difficulties; we heard only music, and saw clearly in our minds eye the progression of a rakish cad from conquest to conquest, resting for a brief siesta, before heading off to pursue the next prospect. Wonderful as they were, the solo contributions of Larry Jess (trumpet), Keith Thomas (oboe) and Mateusz Wolski (violin) never stopped the narrative, never stole the spotlight, and never threatened the integrity maintained by the orchestra.

All the qualities we had enjoyed from the start of the program found their fullest flower in the final work, the Suite compiled in 1944 by conductor Artur Rodzinski out of music from Richard Strauss’s most popular opera, “Der Rosenkavalier” (1911). Following Wagner’s principle of consistency, the music reflects all of the psychological complexity and nostalgia set out in the libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. In the ecstatic harmonies and careening waltzes that make up the suite, as well as in its bittersweet moments of tenderness, the Spokane Symphony produced a true beauty of sound. The sweetness in the strings and winds, the warmth of the brass, all whisked us away to a vanished vision of Vienna, tinged by regret at the passage of time, but soothed by an endless flow of champagne.