MUSIC REVIEW : L.B. Symphony Ends Season With Elegance

Conductor JoAnn Falletta closed the 60th season of the Long Beach Symphony with a demanding program that included Mahler’s massive Symphony No. 5 and Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3, K. 216 on Saturday at the Terrace Theater. Cho-Liang Lin was the soloist.

Falletta led a clean and direct account of Mahler’s sprawling epic, keeping the flow going with injections of energy while concentrating on the long line rather than exploiting details.

It is possible to do both.

Unlike other conductors, Falletta didn’t find cozy schmaltz or neurotic Angst in the music, which perhaps most significantly signal the composer’s presence. Nor did she always persuade that there was some kind of emotional logic at least in the dream-state transitions from earthly horrors to heavenly visions.

A little more delirium would have been welcomed.

But she did welcome in the brass chorale that arrives toward the end of the second movement as if from an unimaginably glorious other shore with full, heart-soaring splendor. And she also allowed herself enough freedom in shaping line and dynamics in the much-abused adagio to make it ethereal and tender. More of this freedom would be welcome.

The orchestra responded smartly and sonorously.

Falletta’s approach to Mozart was similarly broad, with emphasis on an elegant, unstressed surface and tempos rolling along at a moderate clip.

Lin, who played with the orchestra in the opening and closing statements of the outer movements, brought warmth and refinement to his role. His most arresting interpretive moments came in the adagio, where he played with a kind of withdrawn, private sensitivity that evoked the personal hurt usually heard only in Mozart’s later compositions. It was a minor revelation.

The violinist played cadenzas written for him by Raymond Leppard.