Cellists (l) L. Allen and D. Lusterman Dec. 9 (A. Wasserman photo)

SCHUBERT AND MENDELSSOHN BOUQUETS AT COLLEGE OF MARIN CONCERT

The College of Marin Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jim Stopher, presented a finely conceived concert of Mendelssohn and Schubert December 9 in the College’s James Dunn Theatre. The orchestra is a combination of COM students, high school students, and members of the Bay Area musical community.

Mendelssohn wrote his stand-alone Overture inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1826, when he was 22. Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, ophicleide (a 19th-century brass instrument, here replaced by French horns), timpani and strings, this masterful work vividly brings the play’s characters to life.

The conductor and orchestra members introduced major themes with a few words and bars, from the four opening chords by the woodwinds that are the equivalent of “Once upon a Time,” to the scurrying flight of the elves and fairies, the romantic theme of the four young lovers; the hee-haw motif of Bottom, who is transformed into a donkey; and the regal theme of the nobles, Theseus and Hippolita, whose wedding is the basis of the play. With this foundation, the Overture was given a cohesive and spritely reading. Outstanding were the strings, horns, woodwinds and timpani. Mendelssohn in his genius was able to wholly distill Shakespeare’s complex gathering of characters into something as powerful as perfume.

On recordings and in many performances the Overture (1822) and Incidental Music (1843) from A Midsummer Night’s Dream are played as though they’re one work, and their mood is magical and uplifting. They were separated here by Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, which plumbs the depths of human emotion.

Like Mendelssohn after him, Schubert wrote youthful masterworks, but in his maturity the two-movement B Minor Symphony (D. 759), composed in 1822, has generated a long scholarly debate. Though dubbed “Unfinished,” musicians may differ. The conductor Sir Colin Davis asserted that there was “no need for any more of that symphony: it has two numbers in compound time that compliment one another completely.” The Allegro Moderato first movement was performed as a lament or harbinger of tragedy, but throughout, the music shifted and changed in mood, going from ominous to pastoral in a deeply expressive performance. The second movement’s tempo struck me as a bit too slow, but the performance was uniformly very fine, with the trombones, cellos and double basses of special note. After the performance one of the musicians revealed that it was hard to hold back from wanting to speed up the second movement, so insistent is its forward motion, but Mr. Stopher held the orchestra in check.

There was no intermission, and the concert concluded with two selections from Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music, Op. 61, written 20 years after his Overture for a staged production of Midsummer’s Night Dream. The Nocturne was first, followed by the exhilarating Wedding March, beloved of countless newly married couples. As the March came to a rousing conclusion, the near-capacity audience rose to give the ensemble a standing ovation and a bouquet of flowers for Mr. Stopher.