San Diego Symphony ‘Resurrection’ Concerts Will Celebrate Mahler and New Concert Hall – San Diego Union-Tribune

Imagine hearing a voice so extraordinary that you remember it 14 years later.

San Diego Symphony Music Director Rafael Payare was principal horn of the Simón Bolívar Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra on its 2011 world tour of Mahler’s symphonies. Also on the tour was Swedish mezzo-soprano Anna Larsson, whose voice Payare liked so much that he invited her to sing at three concerts at the newly renovated Jacobs Music Center next weekend.

The highlight of the program will be Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.”

“I had no idea that Rafael Payare played in this Bolivar orchestra!” exclaimed Larsson. “I knew he was from Venezuela and had a great reputation. I’m so glad he was there.”

“I am thrilled to welcome Anna Larsson to these performances,” Payare said by email. “I have always greatly admired her musicianship and her approach to Mahler, especially since I played in Simón Bolivar’s orchestra.”

Although Larsson, 58, often performs works by other composers, including opera, she was particularly drawn to Mahler as a teenager.

“This music is really hard to sing because it has to come from a very pure place,” Larsson said, speaking from her home outside Stockholm. “It’s not an opera where costumes, make-up and acting skills are used. It’s almost like you’re naked.

“You have to commit to getting into the soul of the music and try to be humble and just present it so it’s not about me. I like the feeling of being a medium for his music, rather than being “me, me, me – that’s me singing.”

“Joyful and Enriching”

The three “Resurrection” concerts will feature a full orchestra and the 100-piece Symphony Festival Chorus at the Jacobs Music Center. For many attendees, this will be their first time attending a concert at the former Copley Symphony Hall, which recently underwent a more than $125 million renovation.

“‘Resurrection’ is a wonderful way to present our new home to the world,” said Payare, whose first San Diego concert as music director in October 2019 included Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. “His music is close to my heart.”

The rapidly rising soprano Angela Meade will sing alongside Larsson. At New York’s Metropolitan Opera in March 2023, she replaced the title role in Bellini’s opera “Norma” at the last minute. She gave a performance that became a headliner.

The San Diego Symphony will sound and look different during weekend concerts. Payare will place the musicians in a so-called German environment.

“Usually you’re in the audience and I’m facing the orchestra,” he explained. “To my left is the first violin section, and next to them is usually the second violin section. And the cellos are to my right and the bass section is behind them.

“In the German configuration, the first violin section will be on my left, the cellos behind them, then the bass section behind the cellos, and the second violin section will be on my right.”

The last time the San Diego Symphony performed “Resurrection” was in 2010. The orchestra was packed close to the edge of the stage to allow the choir to squeeze in behind it.

In addition to state-of-the-art digital sound and lighting technology, the Jacobs Music Center now has enough space for a large choir. Singers will perform on the hall’s new, raised choir terrace, located at the back of the stage, behind and above the orchestra.

The singers who will sing “Resurrection” here next weekend have undergone rigorous auditions to be among the approximately 100 members of the Festival Choir. It will be divided almost equally between soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices.

Acclaimed choral conductor Andrew Megill oversaw the auditions with Payare. Last year, Megill prepared the choir to sing “Resurrection” with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, which Payare also conducts.

“The greatest difficulty with this piece is the extremely broad dynamic and expressive demands and the powerful and virtuosic singing required,” Megill said by email. “Working with Rafael in Montreal was a joyful and enriching experience. I am excited to explore this work with him again in San Diego.”

Fits Mahler

Larsson began learning music in Swedish schools, where the subject is taught to students from the age of 10. She later began studying with a singing teacher who saw her potential as an opera singer. Larsson studied at Sweden’s Operastudio-67 for three years and then enrolled at the Royal Opera College in Stockholm.

She was 17 when she first heard Mahler. Her teacher encouraged Larsson to take part in a concert presenting his compositions.

“I just liked it,” said the mezzo-soprano. “It stuck in my head and I knew I wanted to sing this music. I felt it so close to me.

“I started opera school, but I still wanted to give a lot of concerts. After opera school, I was taking part in a few competitions when someone told me that I thought I was a match for Mahler.

In 1997, Larsson made her international debut in Mahler’s “Resurrection” with the late Italian conductor Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Since then, she has performed in a variety of opera roles and sung alongside such prestigious conductors as Zubin Mehta, Sir Simon Rattle and Gustavo Dudamel. Dudamel led the international Mahler tour in which she and Payare participated more than a decade ago.

In addition to touring around the world, Larsson – together with her tenor husband and artistic manager Göran Eliasson – runs Vattnäs Concert Barn in the Swedish village where she was born. A chamber music festival takes place here every year, and an opera every two years.

“We’re having a lot of fun with it,” she said. “We both teach, so we have a lot of young singers we work with. This way they can perform with an audience. It’s a very charming place, with 300 seats. This is our summer home.”

The San Diego Symphony concerts this weekend will also feature the work “Time” by the Austrian composer Thomas Larcher, which was commissioned by the San Diego Symphony and premiered in 2022 on the Payare label.

Since “Resurrection” is 80 to 90 minutes long, it will dominate the performances.

“It’s one of the absolute masterpieces,” Payare said. “Not only for the orchestra, but also with the use of the choir and voices, so exposed in the fourth movement.”

Larsson, one of these voices, visited the small house in the Austrian mountains where Mahler composed “Resurrection.”

“We can’t imagine now how quiet it must have been in the mountains – no planes, no cars,” she said. “You hear the birds and nature talking to you. It must have been fantastic. Gustav Mahler was not so much religious as spiritual and very connected with everything that surrounded him.

“Mahler was of Jewish origin, but he lived in the Catholic world of Austria. He didn’t want to talk about God, but about nature and how we would all come together and be one. It’s so vast. It’s like a prayer that we all come together in the end.”

San Diego Symphony: Mahler’s “Resurrection”.

When: 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday; 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 6

Where: Jacobs Music Center, 750 B St., downtown

Tickets: $39-120

Phone: (619) 235-0804

On the Internet: sandiegosymphony.org