New Zealand Conductor Leads San Diego Symphony Orchestra in Joyful Concert

SAN DIEGO — With firm baton control and graceful gestures, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Conductor, Gemma New, opened the Oct. 18 San Diego Symphony Orchestra concert conducting the filigree sounds of dancing fairies in the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, written by 17-year old Felix Mendelssohn.

This was followed by the Midsummer Night’s Dream Nocturne, composed 16 years later, when Mendelssohn wrote the rest of the incidental music to the Shakespeare play. SDSO’s principal horn, Benjamin Jaber, was particularly noteworthy, playing the horn solos in the Nocturne with pure sound and sensitive musicality.

Following the two Midsummer Night’s Dream excerpts, violin soloist, Geneva Lewis, came on stage to perform Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto. Korngold, like Mendelssohn, was a prodigy.  His cantata, Gold, which he composed at age 10, amazed Gustav Mahler, who became his patron. Korngold also drew praise from Richard Strauss and Giacomo Puccini and became one of Europe’s most admired young composers.

In 1934, the movie director Max Reinhardt invited Korngold to Hollywood to adapt Mendelssohn’s music for his film, Midsummer Night’s Dream. This connection gave this evening’s programming of Mendelssohn and Korngold together special significance.

With the advent of Hitler, the Jewish composer, Korngold, moved his family from Vienna to Hollywood and became one of the most celebrated movie score writers in the industry. He composed the violin concerto following World War II, when he retired from movie writing and devoted himself once more to serious concert composition.

In the violin concerto, he utilizes some of the music from his movie scores. The first movement draws its initial theme from the 1937 movie, Another Dawn. Its second theme is from the 1939 movie, Juarez. The second movement, Romance, has an opening theme based on his music from the 1936 movie, Anthony Adverse, for which Korngold won an Oscar, and the final movement includes themes from the 1937 movie, The Prince and the Pauper. It opens with a jig and much of it sounds like the rapid hippity-hopping of cartoon music, ending with energetic jubilance.

The concerto was dedicated to Alma Mahler, widow of Korngold’s mentor, Gustave Mahler, and premiered by Jascha Heifetz, whose remarkable technique and musicality the composer had in mind when he wrote it.

Violinist Geneva Lewis, a student of Israeli violinist, Miriam Fried, at the New England Conservatory, played this challenging work with confidence and virtuosity. Lewis swayed and crouched as she stretched for the high reaches of the fingerboard where much of the music was written.  Both soloist and conductor are New Zealand natives and their musical affinity seemed palpable.

Following intermission, conductor Gemma New returned to lead the SDSO in Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony. The four-movement work was inspired by Mendelssohn’s nine-month visit to Italy at the age of 21. The music is full of sunshine, opening with a happy theme in the violins. The second theme is used as a fugato subject in the development, as Mendelssohn seems to be paying homage to Bach, whose music he helped promote.

The second movement Andante is inspired by a religious procession as it progresses in somber eloquence. The third movement Minuet has a trio section featuring the horns. The symphony ends with a Saltarello, which includes three themes, one of which is a tarantella, a frenzied dance  attributed to how one might move when bitten by a tarantula. The SDSO under New’s inspiring direction, infused the symphony with joyful spirit.

Before the concert began, Julie Pautz, a member of the violin section, delivered a charming welcoming message to the audience. This was followed by words from acting concertmaster,  Wesley Precourt, congratulating Irwin Jacobs on his birthday and leading the entire ensemble in an orchestral rendition of “Happy Birthday.” A smiling Jacobs, standing from his seat in the Grand Tier, stood to acknowledge the music and the applause.

Given the generosity to the SDSO of Irwin and his late wife, Joan, this was a well-deserved tribute to the 92 year-old patron to whom the orchestra owes its generous endowment, and its marvelous, renovated concert hall.

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Eileen Wingard, a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts.