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Mainly Mozart festival closes with magical performance of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony’

This year’s Mainly Mozart festival consisted of five concerts at the Del Mar Surf Cup Sports Park over the span of eight days. It’s less than we’ve been accustomed to pre-pandemic, but these days, we’ll take what we can get.

Conductor Michael Francis has chronologically worked his way through Mozart’s output. This year, he examined Mozart’s late compositions: the last symphony and last piano concerto, the Clarinet Concerto and the Requiem, left unfinished due to Mozart’s untimely death from rheumatic fever at the age of 35. For its first performance, it was likely completed by two of Mozart’s contemporaries, Joseph von Eybler and Franz Xaver Süssmayr.

Completing the Requiem has been the subject of considerable musicological discussion; there are over 20 different modern solutions. Francis chose to use musicologist Robert Levin’s edition, which incorporates a sketch in Mozart’s handwriting of a fugue on the word “Amen.” It otherwise tweaks Süssmayr’s orchestrations and harmonizations. Apart from the “Amen” fugue, the differences are likely unnoticeable to most listeners.

What was noticeable at Saturday’s concert was the engaging performance of the San Diego Master Chorale, soprano Tasha Koontz, mezzo Guadalupe Paz, tenor John K. Russell, and bass Steve Pence and tight, gripping playing by the Mainly Mozart All-Star Orchestra under Francis’ direction.

Choirs were the first victims of COVID concert cancellations, and it’s been a pleasure watching their return this year. The San Diego Master Chorale sang the Requiem with passion, but in the opening movements, they were often overpowered by the orchestra in what appeared to be sound mixing issues.

Since the pandemic forced Mainly Mozart outdoors, the amplification has been stellar, but the orchestra sounded disappointingly tinny on Saturday.

With the “Dies irae,” the Chorale’s volume matched the orchestra, but I had problems in the remainder of the concert understanding some Latin due to unclear enunciation of consonants. A few sections’ entrances were unduly hesitant.

Koontz’s bright, angelic voice was heard to great effect in the “Benedictus” and “Lux Aeterna.” Paz’s velvety lower register had the heft of an alto in the “Recordare” and “Benedictus.” Pence powerfully held onto notes in “Tuba mirum” without any discernable diminuendo, and Russell’s tenor had clarity and force.

The orchestra effortlessly responded to Francis’ conducting in the Requiem, but the revelatory performance that evening was in Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759, the “Unfinished.”

Death prevented Mozart from finishing his composition, but we don’t know why Schubert abandoned this work six years before he died.

Francis sees the “Unfinished” Symphony as a musical counterpart to early Romantic Gothic literature by Mary Shelley or Lord Byron. The sublimely happy second subject is what most listeners take away, but Francis brought out the first movement’s sinister aspects in its introductory measures and mysterious first subject. Rather than hearing the move from minor to major keys as optimistic, that famous melody seemed more like whistling in the graveyard, the return to the opening minor key motive at the end an ominous undercutting of whatever joy we experienced.

In both movements, the orchestra played with beautiful precision and utmost musicality. Important contributions were made by Jeffrey Khaner on flute, Erin Hannigan on oboe, Christopoher Pell on clarinet, Ted Soluri on bassoon, and the San Diego Symphony’s own Benjamin Jaber on horn.

The audience seemed to eagerly go along with Francis’ more gloomy interpretation, although his assertions that Schubert had syphilis and was gay are still debated.

However, there can be no argument that the crowd at the Sports Park had a splendid evening.

Hertzog is a freelance writer.