By Diane Peterson 

The Press Democrat, March 3, 2003

The Santa Rosa Symphony, under Music Director Jeffrey Kahane, offered little in the way of razzle-dazzle Saturday night at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, but solid musicianship helped make the season's keystone concert one of the most satisfying so far. 

The concert leapt out of the gate with an alluring new work, ``In aeternum,'' by young composer Pierre Jalbert, followed by a late work by late-Romantic composer Richard Strauss, ``Oboe Concerto in D Major,'' performed sensitively by oboist Allan Vogel. 

The audience responded enthusiastically to both works, but it was Berlioz's feverish ``Symphonie Fantastique,'' performed during the second half, that really bowled them over. 

Taken at a brisk clip, Kahane directed this wildly inventive symphony with verve and confidence, molding its melodic lines and rhythms into something that sounded fresh and new, even if you had heard them many times before. 

The piece was originally scheduled to open the symphony's 2001-2002 season but was postponed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when Kahane switched the program to Beethoven's ``Ninth Symphony.'' 

Like Beethoven's ``Ninth,'' Berlioz's ``Symphonie Fantastique'' revolutionized the symphony as a genre. While Beethoven constructed a new form, however, Berlioz filled it with a new kind of content. 

Paving the way for the symphonic poem, Berlioz called his symphony ``An Episode in an Artist's Life'' and crafted a colorful, programmatic work that followed a young, lovesick musician on a Romantic journey through love, madness and death. 

On Saturday night, the work opened confidently with a solo by James Matheson, the principal oboist with the San Francisco Opera, sitting in for the symphony's regular oboe principal, Barbara Midney. 

The opening set the tone for the entire piece, which clicked into a rhythmic groove despite tricky dynamics and other technical challenges. Solos by the English horn in the third movement, the brass and bassoons in the fourth movement and the cellos and clarinet in the fifth movement were particularly noteworthy. 

Ending with a ferocious fugue, the Berlioz symphony brought the crowd unanimously to its feet for an appreciative ovation. 

The evening opened on a distinctly modern note with Jalbert's ``In aeternam,'' written in 2000 for the California Symphony. 

``In aeternam'' opened with a lush, harmonic landscape -- played by muted strings holding harmonics -- that is lightly punctuated by 20th-century rhythms and tones. 

The three-part work evoked a wide range of emotions and colors, carrying the audience from peace and serenity to chaos and fury and back again. 

There were hints of the ethereal, atonal music of George Crumb, under whom Jalbert studied at the University of Pennsylvania, but ``In aerternam'' sounded a bit more accessible and down-to-earth than the works of Crumb, who uses Tibetan prayer stones and other special effects to create timeless, mystical soundscapes. 

The Strauss Oboe Concerto was performed with virtuosic flair by Vogel, who was left gasping for air between his long, note-choked passages and cadenzas. The oboist played with his eyes closed but his heart open. 

The symphony lent sensitive support to the Strauss concerto, especially in the first movement with a sonorous solo by principal violist Linda Ghidossi-DeLuca, and in the whimsical finale, when the English horn and oboe blend into one. 

The Santa Rosa Symphony will repeat the Saturday program at 8 tonight at the Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. Tickets cost $24-45. Call 546-8742. 

You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or dpeterson@pressdemocrat.com.