A leader in symphonic innovation and imagination now for six decades, the Oakland Symphony launched its first full post-pandemic season this month with the first of its music-director candidates out front. And, of course, with an innovative program. Through countless setbacks, the ensemble  keeps emerging again and again like a phoenix from the ashes; its struggles remain a challenge for the future.

Has any ensemble suffered greater adversity? It went bankrupt after the off-season death (accidental drowning) of its highly talented 32-year-old maestro Calvin Simmons, now precisely 40 years ago. He had been feted as the first Black conductor of any major US orchestra. A new organization was formed, eventually taking on the old name in the same home site, and many of the former players as well.

The more recent OS music director, the exemplary Michael Morgan (also Black), died last year at the age of only 63, having served here indefatigably since 1991. Given the large Oakland Black population, these men were a welcome fit for the community as they presented a very broad-ranging repertory that was rarely predictable.

Local commemorations of Morgan are well-deserved. But the charismatic Simmons remains a bit marginalized. Both made immense contributions, each in their own way.

And now, the new era, with the lead-off batter (it’s baseball season still!) Ankush Kumar Bahl as the podium guest, marking the orchestra’s resumption of  a normal, full-season schedule. Bahl was a Bay Area product of Indian descent now running the Omaha Symphony and  vieing for the O.S. directorship. Nurtured by some very prominent conductors, he has a secure stick technique demonstrated in two demanding contemporary works. He is also one of the most adept annotators that the Paramount Theater podium  has heard in recent years.

Chen Yi’s “The Golden Flute” was a priceless virtuosity vehicle for guest soloist Demarre McGill and the orchestra. Despite his modest-size frame, McGill is one powerful flutist with extraordinary breath control, in turns both whimsical and canary-like, able to modulate tones like gentle swells with breath alone. His bird effects were swooping and swarming unerringly, all while imbuing this Western orchestra with techniques from China. They emanate from this remarkable émigré woman, now 69, who had managed to smuggle her violin and clandestine Bach music to the work farms during the Cultural Revolution, “to inspire the peasants working the fields,” more or less as Mao would have it back then. (Bach? With Mao??)

Moving on from the cadence that brought down the house, McGill appended James Lee’s “Principal Brothers,” an unaccompanied showpiece encore.

Bahl followed with Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,”  often cited as the very first romantic symphony. As the personnel here in their six-concert classical series play few romantics, the start was too detached for comfort, like a vintage table that could used some regluing. But the middle movement depicting the shepherd horn calls across the mountains was beautifully wrought by Bahl and cohorts. The movement lifted up this entire programmatic symphony through the gallows scene, the beheading, and the witches’ sabbath toward an effusive celebration of death by the morbid hero of the symphony.

Notable among the sections of this enlarged Berlioz orchestra were the violas and the harp pairing. Three bass players were too few, but on the other hand you had to admire the rarity of paired tubas.

Named after Beethoven’s motto “Fate Now Conquers,” composer Carlos Simon, 36,  also quoted some harmonies from Beethoven’s Seventh for the brief but profoundly accented curtain-raiser.

MUSIC NOTES—Yet another Oakland musical luminary, Bob Hughes (Robert Grove Hughes), passed away this summer at 91. He had been a true jack of all trades as bassoonist, conductor and composer. A longtime collaborator of composer Lou Harrison, conductor Hughes had also founded the youth orchestra here and was credited as composer on the Disney film “Never Cry Wolf.”

OAKLAND SYMPHONY, A.K. Bahl conducting as podium guest, with flute virtuoso Demarre McGill. October 14, Paramount Theater, Oakland, CA. For O.S. info, (510) 444-0802 or go online: www.oaklandsymphony.org.

Click to share our review: