Santa Rosa Symphony wraps up season with piano duo, world premiere

Blasting off Saturday night at the Green Music Center’s Weill Hall under the baton of Music Director Francesco Lecce-Chong, the final concert set of the Santa Rosa Symphony’s season provided a sonic thrill ride worthy of a Disney theme park. Two colorful tone poems by Modest Mussorgsky and Richard Strauss straddled a world premiere of a double-piano concerto by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, who attended the performance.

Several “firsts” figure prominently in the Santa Rosa Symphony’s 2022-2023 season — which will conclude with the performance Monday night — along with one notable “last.”

The world premiere was a first, of course, but it also underscored last September’s release of the symphony’s first commercial CD featuring four works by Zwilich, who served as the ensemble’s artistic partner during its virtual season of 2020-2021. That there was a virtual season at all was a near miracle, and the resulting CD, highlighted by Zuill Bailey’s performance of Zwilich’s 2020 Cello Concerto, was the icing on the cake.

In his fifth and first full season to date — due to various pandemic-related glitches — Lecce-Chong promised to provide a balance between the familiar and the innovative. In reality, the maestro seemed to hit his stride on multiple fronts throughout the seven concert sets (plus last month’s special performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” an operatic first for the symphony).

Season highlights included a glowing Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, a reinvigorated Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, an irresistible array of nostalgic Hollywood soundtracks and a cutting-edge world premiere of Angelica Negron’s “Sinfonia Isleña” as part of the First Symphony project supporting big works by contemporary composers.

Saturday night’s program offered more delicious contrasts, with works spanning the mid-19th through the early-21st centuries. The most familiar sounds were conjured by the orchestra in the curtain-opener, Mussorgsky’s devilishly difficult “Night on Bald Mountain,” made popular as the finale to the 1940 Walt Disney film, “Fantasia.”

From the high-pitched cawing of the woodwinds to the ghoulishly heavy brass and low strings, this Russian work draws a demonic portrait of a witches’ sabbath held on a bare mountaintop outside Kyiv, Ukraine. The story based on an ancient, midsummer pagan celebration is aimed at ensuring a bountiful harvest.

Lecce-Chong kept a tight hand on the tempo changes, dynamics and ensemble in the 12-minute work, and the scurrying strings and woodwinds locked in smoothly with the booming brass and percussion. It was a magic carpet ride.

Another first for the symphony was its performance of Richard Strauss’ final tone poem, “An Alpine Symphony,” after intermission. Although the San Francisco Symphony performed the work in Weill Hall in 2013 as part of a now-defunct four-concert series, this marked the first time the Santa Rosa Symphony climbed its craggy heights.

The musical documentary follows a treacherous mountain climb starting before sunrise and winding through Alpine forests, high pastures and waterfalls to a vast summit vista, followed by a descent through soul-searching darkness, represented by a thunderstorm, and a return home at nightfall. It’s a 24-hour ramble abbreviated into 50-some minutes of melodically complex, majestic and oftentimes bombastic music.

Among the largest of Strauss’ tone poems, it requires a veritable army of musicians, especially in the brass and percussion sections. (While Strauss called for more than 120 players, I counted 90-some Santa Rosa Symphony musicians onstage.)

Channeling one of his mentors — the late Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink, who made a benchmark recording of the work in 1985 — Lecce-Chong tackled the challenging journey fearlessly, conducting without a score and balancing the tone poem’s visceral excitement and emotion with moments of quiet reflection and warmth.

The 23-member brass section — including multiple horns, trumpets, trombones, four Wagner tubas and two regular tubas — worked together to create a nicely blended sound, and the percussion section induced the requisite fear and apprehension with all kinds of trembling effects, from a double set of timpani to a wind machine and thunder machine.

In terms of thrills, this was a spine-tingling roller coaster ride. That said, the wall of sound was earsplitting and incoherent at times for those of us seated above the stage. The back balcony may be a better option for this work, or a set of ear plugs.

In the spotlight before intermission, Zwilich’s 22-minute Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra was performed with passion and precision by twin sisters Christina and Michelle Naughton of New York City, who tossed off the jazzy piece on two pianos nestled together like a yin-yang symbol. The lid to the piano at stage left was removed, and both pianos could be heard clearly.

The three-movement concerto was alternately raw and rough-edged, lyrical and smooth. It was highlighted by bold octaves and arpeggios, edgy rhythms and jazz riffs in both piano and accompaniment along with unusual percussion, including a drum kit with snare top-hat and a mellow marimba. The viola and clarinet solos were both executed with verve. As far as the thrill factor, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride comes to mind.

The final concert set of the season marks a “last” for Alan Silow, who will be honored as the symphony’s first CEO and President Emeritus when he retires in July. After all three concerts, plans were to fete Silow with cheesecake and a champagne toast by incoming Board Chair Keven Brown.

The concert will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Green Music Center’s Well Hall, located on the Sonoma State University campus.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the time for the Monday-night concert and the spelling of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s name.