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Reviews of Lance's Tanglewood Festival Chorus Performances |
 
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MUSIC REVIEW
(The BSO cannot have been pleased to read the announcement last week that Haitink, who had canceled all his summer appearances because of exhaustion and a heavy fall schedule of Wagner opera, responded to a last-minute emergency call from the Berlin Philharmonic and is substituting for an ailing Claudio Abbado in concerts at the Salzburg Festival and in London during the period he had been expected at Tanglewood.)
Fischer opened on home ground with Kodaly's colorful ''Dances From Galanta,'' which the orchestra played with fire and flirtatious abandon; there were splendid solos from clarinetist William Hudgins and flutist Fenwick Smith, among others. The symphony was Tchaikovsky's Fourth, in which Fischer reconciled the conflicting claims of good taste and excitement. In the scherzo, Fischer kept each section of the orchestra - plucked strings, woodwinds, and staccato brass - in proportion; the finale was an earned victory.
The concerto was Liszt's E-flat Piano Concerto, which is always fun to hear delivered in a Hungarian accent (Annie Fischer made one of the best recordings, and Zoltan Kocsis was the most recent Tanglewood soloist).
On this occasion the zippy Hungarian inflections came from conductor and orchestra, although there was considerable individuality in the work of pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
The French pianist had subdued his usual sartorial flamboyance - only the buckled pumps and the double-breasted white jacket whispered of splendors past - but he certainly didn't tone down his pianism, which was as extravagant as ever. He played the piece louder and faster than it's possible to, except for the parts that were slower and softer than most other pianists play them. Thibaudet must have a different metabolism from most of his colleagues; he's a showoff, but he's not merely that; he's a musical showoff. The only liability of his playing is a rather narrow and prickly sonority, like Alexis Weissenberg's, a shower of nails. But the nails hit their target.
Sunday afternoon brought a wonderful concert led by assistant conductor Federico Cortese, who opened with Verdi. The rowdy ''Sicilian Vespers'' Overture from Verdi's early middle period was followed by two of his sublime final works, the ''Stabat Mater'' and the ''Te Deum.'' Cortese has a wonderful understanding, both intuitive and educated, of Verdi's worlds. Toscanini liked to open concerts with the ''Sicilian Vespers,'' and Cortese's reading had some of the same full-throated, unashamed intensity.
Both the ''Stabat Mater'' and the ''Te Deum'' rise to tremendous climaxes, but mostly these are subtle, indrawing, meditative works composed with an awe-inspiring flexibility - it is music that is always present, and in-your-face, a characteristic Verdi's music never lost, but which is also always in evolution or in transition to another place, another emotional space, a different state of being.
Cortese's grasp of this music is profound, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus sang its collective heart out, whether entering on perilous pianissimos or making the heavens ring with the cry of ''Sanctus.'' Laura Grande took the brief soprano solo at the end of the ''Te Deum'' and sang it fervently.
After intermission there was a remarkable performance of Brahms's Second Piano Concerto by Nelson Freire, whose playing had solidity, fullness, amplitude, flexibility, and tonal warmth. Many standard interpretive strategies in this piece result from musical or technical compromises of a kind Freire cannot bring himself to make; his rhythm is unfaltering, and he never substituted hammering for music-making. The second movement was particularly meditative and interactive, and Martha Babcock's playing of the cello solo was both strong and sensitive. Cortese and the orchestra were with Freire all the way, and the finale served as a release from striving, raging, and grieving; it had verve, charm, earthiness, and lightness of being.
This story ran on page F04 of the Boston Globe on 8/22/2000.
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of The Globe Online |
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ENOX - No conductor is a fair trade for Bernard Haitink, who had been scheduled to conduct the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood on Friday night, but the Hungarian conductor Adam Fischer returned after an absence of 15 years and did a very nice job.