On the spiritual side: ISO plays Berg, Messiaen, and Strauss before music director takes a break

After the "wow" factor of a series opener featuring a popular favorite, Dvorak's "New World" 'Symphony, followed by the annual gala concert with the much-lauded violinist Augustin Hadelich in the spotlight, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra turns its attention to music probing inner resources and spiritual striving this weekend.

Human mortality, still holding steady at 100 percent, is the focus of "Transformations of the Spirit," a program whose second performance at Hilbert Circle Theatre is at 5:30 p.m. today. The title aims to direct the audience's attention to the possibility of the life beyond this one.  The theology is mostly implied rather than explicit as reflected in three much different works: Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, Olivier Messiaen's "L'Ascension," and Richard Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration."

Clearly, music director Jun Märkl intends to put the orchestra through its paces and challenge the audience before he takes a break from the podium until January. Yet there is little question of "accessibility," a much-abused word that falsely divides classical music into what can be readily enjoyed and what may be "hard to get". All three pieces connect to the symphonic tradition in distinctive ways,  but they require an orientation to life-and-death matters that we all resist contemplating. 

The most focused of the three in terms of refining the composer's experience is Berg's concerto, his unique venture in the soloist-with-orchestra genre and a conscious memorial to a young friend who died young, Manon Gropius. The Austrian modernist dedicated the score "to the memory of an angel," and the music embodies that focus, especially with the quotation of and variations on a Bach chorale in the second movement. 

Stefan Jackiw has made two strong guest appearances here.

The main thing this repertoire choice has going for it is the presence of Stefan Jackiw as soloist. In his previous ISO guest appearance, Jackiw managed to shake some of the sugar topping off  Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violin Concerto, the best-known classical work by an eminent film composer after he settled in this country.Similarly, there is a concert-artist manner of projecting more than adequate feeling while being lofty and even severe at the same time that suits the Berg concerto well. 

Though there are touches of technical virtuosity in the solo part that Jackiw brought off expertly, he might better be credited with virtuosity of insight. His performance Friday night was  poised and restrained from the outset. His command of the solo part never lacked warmth, but it was a patient exposition of Berg's ideas. And his performance, including his adept phrasing, was well supported by the colorful orchestration under Märkl's guidance.

The transition to the music's jagged power, erupting amid episodes of folk tunes and the waltz, was smooth at every turn. Berg's score moves aggressively beyond elegy and toward the feeling of offense often stirred in us in response to lives cut off too soon. By the time the Bach chorale, "Es is genug," is introduced and subtly varied, there is an onrush of difficult acceptance that Jackiw's thorough commitment rendered movingly. Coordination here is no easy task, given the characteristic complexity of Berg's muse, but Friday's performance displayed a seamless partnership. 

The audience, which may have included many skeptical about twelve-tone composition, was thoroughly charmed. Called back for an encore, Jackiw played the "Largo" from J.S. Bach's Sonata in C major. The performance had the same patience and stateliness, with hints of vulnerability tucked in, that the violinist had shown in the concerto. 

Messiaen's "L'Ascension," whose four sections carry titles explicit about the significance of Christ's ascension into heaven — central to Catholic belief and an indelible part of the composer's orientation — opened the program. The full spectrum of brass dynamics was on display in the first movement. In the second, the audience was treated to more of Roger Roe's English-horn soloing (which played a crucial role in the Dvorak symphony two weeks ago), plus a finely regulated orchestral crescendo toward the end.

The French composer's rhythmic idiosyncrasies were well dispatched in the third movement. In the finale, the confident approach of the Savior to sit on God's right hand received ethereal representation by the full string choir.

After intermission, the mainstream example of the program's theme arrived with "Death and Transfiguration" (Tod und Verklärung). Translated lines from a poem by a Strauss friend subsequently attached to the music were projected above the stage. They give some guidance to what is being expressed by that hidden narrative of a creative artist's struggle with death, but they also remind us that sometimes the explicitness of words overstates what instrumental music can express on its own.

Friday's performance was notable for the scattering of eloquent wind solos, some of them quite brief, toward the start. The imagined subject of the dying experience (an amazing achievement for a composer in his mid-20s) recounts the zest of a vitality that is draining away from him. The dramatic details were vividly suggested in a typically conscientious manner by conductor and orchestra. 

As these subside, the listener inevitably is reminded of the phrase "How dry I am" (just as "Three Blind Mice" always comes back as Dvorak's "New World" Symphony approaches its end).  Such resemblances seem like accidental intrusions, but fade into insignificance in the face of such well-integrated interpretations as ISO audiences have enjoyed during the launch of the Classical Series.