Finding cohesive The Wasps not easy

The 2022 San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival concluded with concerts on Friday, June 17, and Saturday, June 18. They were, as always, excellent.

An unlooked-for treat came in the form of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Wasps Overture at the Friday concert. It has long been a personal favorite but hearing it in a live performance didn’t seem to be an option.

This may sound strange but getting a live version of The Wasps Overture was something of a peak experience for me. It just isn’t done very often in the United States. I went to lunch with the festival’s music librarian Robert Sutherland, formerly of the Metropolitan Opera. He said finding a cohesive version of the orchestra parts for The Wasps wasn’t that easy.

He had checked with the New York Philharmonic and the last time they performed it, Sir Adrian Boult was the conductor. That was at least 50 years ago. Music director Michael Francis is from England and I hope for more of this type of programming at future festivals.

The second piece of music was Camille Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with German cellist Maximillian Hornung. The Saint-Saëns is a foundational piece of the cello repertoire and Hornung played it with exquisite musicality. The music that flowed forth from his bow and strings was both meticulous and expansive with great care being taken in the transitions between phrases. Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 brought the evening to an exciting and satisfying conclusion.

The final concert on Saturday featured two unfinished pieces of music. Franz Schubert's Symphony No, 8: Unfinished and Mozart’s Requiem. The opening movement of The Unfinished is perhaps the most rigorous music he ever composed. It is on a heroic scale that I don’t often associate with Schubert, the master melodist. Yet, in the midst of the storm, Schubert retains his lyricism. Were it to have been completed it would stand as one of the greatest symphonies of the Romantic Era.

The Robert Levin version of Mozart's Requiem was chosen for this performance. Levin completed his version in 1993. The most obvious addition is an “Amen” fugue after the famous Lacrymosa section.

Maestro Francis put the orchestra and the San Diego Master Chorale through their paces with brisk tempos throughout but particularly in the Dies Irae. The vocal quartet of soloists was solid with Soprano Tasha Koontz and mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Paz making admirable contributions. It was a bit difficult to judge the vocal quality of the soloists and the chorus because of the necessary amplification of the outdoor venue.

What was not difficult to judge was the response of the 2,000+ audience members. The assembly stood to its feet and showered appreciation upon the chorus, soloists, orchestra, and conductor and all was right.