Tucson gets magnificent Mahler, soprano’s unforgettable debut

The second came Saturday, April 1, when Grammy-winning soprano Angel Blue made her Arizona debut with her Arizona Opera recital at Holsclaw Hall.

If you weren’t among the audience filling two-thirds of Linda Ronstadt Music Hall on Friday or the near sellout audience at Holsclaw, here’s what you missed.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection” is not something orchestras the size of the Tucson Symphony can program very often.

It requires a big choir, two soloists and nearly 100 musicians to make it worth the effort.

They wait until a special occasion, like when the TSO last performed “Resurrection” with George Hanson at the podium in 2009 to follow up on the historic release of the orchestra’s first commercial CD in 2008.

On Friday, March 31, almost 14 years to the day later, Hanson’s successor José Luis Gomez revisited the work for no good reason other than to give Tucson a chance to experience a truly remarkable piece of music.

“Resurrection” runs around 85 minutes with no intermission, a rollercoaster of pulsating emotions spread over five movements, from the sobering and somber funeral march to the soaring exclamation of the finale that felt like a soul rising from the body and ascending into the clouds.

Gomez’s Mahler No. 2 added a gentleness to the opening movement. The baritone-voiced cellos and bass brought out a sense of brooding that made way for dramatic flashes and sorrowful moments of grief and reflection interrupted by bouts of pounding percussion and crashing cymbals accentuated by horns and winds and the increasingly frenetic strings.

The choir — numbering more than 100 mixed voices from the TSO Chorus under the direction of Marcela Molina and Benjamin Hansen, the University of Arizona Symphonic Choir directed by Elizabeth Schauer and Hansen’s Helios Ensemble — came on stage after the first movement. Guest soloists soprano Kelley Nassief and contralto Emily Marvosh were tucked behind the violins.

Reminiscent of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Choral,” you don’t hear the choir until the end, introduced by the beautifully voiced Marvosh singing the “Urlicht” (Primal Light) to signal the beginning of the finale while the choir enters with a whisper. The voices tiptoed in and out throughout the prolonged orchestral part that included howling cries of despair and wildly fluctuating mood swings from the horns and percussion with the strings coming in to temper and then disturb the oncoming peace of the finale.

It’s in the finale that we get to hear the beauty and power of that choir, complemented by the united voices of Marvosh and Nassief, who seemed to be initially overpowered by the instruments in her brief solo before finding her full voice in the duet.

When folks recall internationally acclaimed soprano Angel Blue’s Arizona debut recital, they might not remember every song she sang.

But they will remember that special voice and how Blue hit that soaring high note at the end of Schumann’s “Stille Tränen” (Silent Tears) and let it hang there while the audience held its collective breath.

They will rave about her impressive soprano range and lush coloratura on a couple of Strauss songs and her joyful interpretation of Lee Hoiby’s “The Lady of the Harbor.” 

Saturday’s audience got to see what the rest of the world has come to realize since Blue landed on the world stage a decade ago: She is the kind of generational talent whose legacy will be enduring.

But her enormous vocal talents tell only part of Blue’s story: The bigger story is how she connected with the audience, many of whom had only a passing acquaintance with her talent through her handful of PBS specials.

Blue, accompanied by pianist Bryan Wagorn, added two surprise guests to the lineup: longtime friends bass Matthew Anchel and tenor Terence Chin-Loy, who happened to be 90 minutes away in Phoenix doing Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” with Arizona Opera. 

As an encore, Blue invited three UA voice students — sisters Rebeckah Resare and Bethany Pehrson, and Nadari Hockenhull — on stage to join her in Puccini’s famous “O mio babbino caro.” 

See full reviews of last weekend’s concerts at tucson.com.