Supple Mahler

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The third annual Festival del Sole came to an impressive conclusion Sunday afternoon at the Lincoln Theater in Yountville, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under its dynamic new music director, Jaap van Zweden, performing an all-Mahler program capped by a forceful, streamlined performance of the composer’s Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor.

Van Zweden, who was appointed in Dallas earlier this year and officially starts his tenure there with the 2008-2009 season, was the big news at this year’s festival, which presented 10 days of orchestral concerts, chamber music, and benefit performances, as well as numerous art, food, and wine events at venues throughout the Napa Valley. This program — and an earlier one he led on Friday, featuring works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, and Ravel — offered Bay Area audiences an intriguing and largely rewarding first look at his podium skills.

Sunday in Yountville, the Amsterdam-born conductor (who also serves as chief conductor and artistic director of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra) opened the program with a performance of Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder, with mezzo-soprano Jill Grove as soloist.

Yet it was the lean, supple performance of the Mahler Fifth that demonstrated the potential for exciting music-making in the years to come for Van Zweden and his new ensemble.

The conductor apparently rejects the notion of Mahler’s score as a platform for all manner of heightened emotionalism (or, as the anti-Bernstein camp likes to call it, wallowing). There was certainly little excess in Van Zweden’s reading of the five-movement score, which came in at a fleet, but no less potent, 70 minutes.

Responsive Playing

Van Zweden established a firm, forward-looking pulse in the first movement’s opening pages, and the orchestra responded handsomely. The Funeral March, with its grim little triplets, boasted genuine warmth in the strings and wonderful clarity in the brass, though the effect was somewhat mitigated, at least where I was sitting on the left side of the orchestra section, by the Lincoln Theater’s oddly diffusing acoustics.

The second movement benefited from gorgeous phrasing by the cellos and woodwinds. Yet what registered most indelibly was the players’ unified, nuanced response to the unbridled vehemence of Mahler’s writing.

The Scherzo was especially fine, with the ghostly Ländler casting its customarily mordant spell. Van Zweden let every detail have its effect without losing focus or belaboring the point.

If the conductor’s sleek approach found a pitfall, it was in the fourth movement Adagietto, for harp and strings. The orchestral sound was rich and radiant, but Van Zweden occasionally seemed to be skimming over its reflective surface; this was where I wished for more of a chance to linger. The extroverted Rondo finale, however, was a triumph for all concerned.

In contrast, the opening performance of the Ruckert Lieder left much to be desired. Van Zweden’s conducting yielded a series of lovely, even affecting, episodes, unconnected by any discernible thread.

Grove, singing Mahler’s cycle for the first time, may yet find it a congenial fit, as the voice is aptly large, warm, and beautifully colored. For now, though, her approach is unmistakably tentative. The singer delivered the five settings with her eyes glued to the score — not advisable in any of Mahler’s vocal works, but always distancing, and particularly disappointing, in the soul-searching depths of “Um Mitternacht” and “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.”

Georgia Rowe is a Bay Area arts writer. Her work has appeared in Opera News, Gramophone, The San Jose Mercury News, The Oakland Tribune, The San Francisco Examiner, and The Contra Costa Times.