This weekend, Bruno Ferrandis leads the Santa Rosa Symphony in his final set of concerts as their Music Director, ending a dozen years in that position. He’s programmed a suitably deep and reflective work for the occasion, Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Also on the program at the Green Music Center‘s Weill Hall is a piece for orchestra and the hammered dulcimer-like instrument called a cymbalom by a young Czech composer.

There’s more information about the concerts at the Santa Rosa Symphony website.

For Ferrandis, Mahler’s final completed symphony was an appropriately grand work for the occasion. “For me it’s the manner of saying ‘Au revoir, good bye’. Not to life, as Mahler does in the Ninth Symphony, but it’s a good manner to say ‘au revoir’ in a very profound way. Because I love that community, I wanted something with an enormous substance, and here with Mahler Nine, I got it.” He says he feels mixed emotions at the approach of the concerts this Saturday through Monday. “To retire after 12 years, it’s difficult. But in a way it’s good. Renewal is good, rejuvenation is good. New ideas are good for an orchestra… I feel at the same time sad to go, but in the same time good, that I supposedly have accomplished my mission here. And not too sad in a way, because I’m coming back next May, in 2019. So it will be always the laureate conductor coming from time to time and visiting to see how his good old orchestra is doing.” Meanwhile, the recently named Francesco Lecce-Chong gets the seal of approval from Ferrandis. “I feel very good about Francesco, very positive that this young man, he is super talented, will bring the orchestra to even new heights. So it’s very important to the community that the baton is passed to someone like him.”