Mechetti, orchestra, hall in glorious sync

Fabio Mechetti made a magnificent return Saturday to the Spokane Symphony in the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox. The weather was horrible, but the very large audience who braved it was clearly delighted. So was the orchestra.

Mechetti served as the symphony’s music director from 1993 to 2004. But his Spokane connection began earlier when he was the orchestra associate conductor in the 1984-‘85 season. He was an excellent conductor then, and since his departure to conduct the Jacksonville Symphony, he has only gotten better.

Mechetti chose a program that was a “a test of the limits of the hall” he picked for the orchestra’s new home before he left Spokane – a contemporary work by Paul Richards, and two highly contrasting symphonies by Mozart and Shostakovich. The fire and ice of this program show no discernible limit to what Mechetti sought to achieve.

Richards’ “Trip Hammer” was an ear-grabber filled with swirling figuration in the strings and woodwind alternating with syncopated rhythmic snaps and blows from the brass and percussion. There was even a lyric bass clarinet solo played by James Schoepflin.

To celebrate the 252nd anniversary of Mozart’s birth, Mechetti chose the composer’s happiest symphony, the “Linz” written within the space of three days when Mozart was in the Austrian town with his bride on a belated honeymoon. Mechetti’s “test” was to see just how softly he could persuade the orchestra to play in the Fox and still make the details of Mozart’s score clear. The result was a performance that brought out both the work’s festive elegance and nearly-operatic beauty without ever threatening to grow aggressive or melodramatic.

To see what the orchestra and the hall could do with music that was both aggressive and melodramatic, as well as extremely beautiful, Mechetti chose Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

Gustav Mahler, one of Shostakovich’s heroes, once said, “Every symphony creates a whole world.” And what a world Shostakovich created in this symphony! It was the response of the Russian soul to the brutalities of Stalinist Russia in the late 1930s. Mechetti’s mentor (and Shostakovich’s friend) Mstislav Rostropovich told Mechetti, “In order to survive Russians could only work, drink and pray.” All of these responses are made into music in the Fifth Symphony.

Saturday’s performance was the best, certainly the most moving, of the many I have heard including one conducted here in the 1990s by Mechetti.

Why?

The easy answer is the superb control Mechetti brought to every detail of the score. Add to that the excellent solo and ensemble playing of an orchestra that seemed fully committed to the work and this conductor’s view of it. Notable were the several violin solos by concertmaster Mateusz Wolski, flute solos by Bruce Bodden, and the glorious horn solo in the finale by Jennifer Brummett, among many others.

The “prayerful” Largo had haunting, beautiful playing by the eight-part string section that reflected Russian Orthodox liturgy and had distant echoes of the chanting of Jewish cantors.

The finale was a crushing march of autocratic hectoring. The lacerating irony of this work was completely lost on Stalin, who loved it. It was not lost on Saturday’s audience, who rose in a prolonged ovation nor on the orchestra who tapped their stands and stamped their feet to honor Mechetti’s and their own splendid performance.