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Reviews of Lance's Tanglewood Festival Chorus Performances |
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MUSIC REVIEW A century's music is celebrated
The gala concert was a 23/4-hour extravaganza hosted by Dame Diana Rigg, who, appropriately enough, was apparently making her Symphony Hall debut - the occasion, she remarked, inaugurates the building's next century, which will cherish the work of composers and performers yet to be born. The British actress delivered her script with professional aplomb and looked terrific in a Chinese caftan slit so high in the leg that she probably could have done a bit of Emma Peel kickboxing if she'd chosen to.
The program began with solo performances and moved by stages through a Boston Pops set to a movement of Beethoven's ''Missa Solemnis'' for chorus and orchestra, the work that inaugurated the hall.
Clad only in a loincloth, Taiko drummer Yoshikazu Fujimoto, a regular Boston Marathoner, began the evening with a dramatically rhythmic assault on a great drum. Dame Diana introduced Yo-Yo Ma by paying tribute to Symphony Hall's famous acoustics, which were seriously compromised by the fans on television cameras and lights - the hall carries their sounds to every listener too. Ma's playing of two movements from Bach's Third Suite for Solo Cello was eloquent but not easy to make out. Jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut offered Richard Rodgers's ''Lover'' featuring a lively jazz rhythm overlaid with classical keyboard figuration, some of it none too cleanly played; he looked nervous. The Boys Choir of Harlem did a spectacular job on the spiritual ''Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho'' and then sang backup to James Taylor, who offered ''That Lonesome Road'' and ''Shower the People'' in unpretentious, musically satisfying arrangements by composer Stanley Silverman. Taylor himself triumphed through understatement, honest feeling, and collegial sharing with the Boys Choir.
Dame Diana's brief history of the Pops brought a spontaneous round of applause at the name of Arthur Fiedler. John Williams led off the Pops set with a chiming fanfare, ''Sound the Bells,'' which he wrote to celebrate the wedding of the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan in 1993. The Chieftains then joined him for two film-music episodes from ''Long Journey Home'' and Williams's own Ireland-to-Oklahoma epic ''Far and Away.'' There was some touching penny-whistling in both of these; in between, the Chieftains offered a bit of traditional music.
Keith Lockhart bounded on for high-energy performances of Sondheim's ''Comedy Tonight,'' in a gimmicky arrangement that quotes Strauss's ''Till Eulenspiegel,'' and one of his signature tunes, ''Runnin' Wild.'' Lockhart's chosen soloist was Broadway's Mandy Patinkin, who had sung on Lockhart's opening night as Pops conductor. Patinkin, casual in black T-shirt and sneakers, offered some amusing banter - he said he hoped he could perform long enough in Symphony Hall for Lockhart to look as old as he's supposed to. His singing brought some of the audience to its feet, but to these ears his voice was wobbly and thin-toned, his agony-school phrasing of a medley of Sondheim's ''Loving You'' and Rodgers's ''If I Loved You'' melodramatic. ''Singin' in the Bathtub'' is a novelty number that segues into ''The Barber of Seville'' and ''Singin' in the Rain'' and Patinkin trotted out every trick in his extensive repertoire, including a flirtation with concertmaster Tamara Smirnova and the aging stripper's vulgar gimmick of humiliating an innocent balding gentleman in the audience.
The final segment of the program featured Seiji Ozawa and the great ensemble for which Symphony Hall was built, the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The ''Kyrie'' from the ''Missa Solemnis'' recalled the rugged splendor of the BSO's commemorative performances two weeks ago. There was a new team of soloists, all excellent - Christine Brewer, Theodora Hanslowe (whose gown did not proclaim ''solemn Mass''), Richard Clement (alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center), and Robert Honeysucker. Violinist Gil Shaham, who recorded John Williams's ''TreeSong'' with the orchestra a week ago, returned to play the touching cradle-song from Williams's score to ''Schindler's List'' before Ozawa and the orchestra launched into an elegantly apocalyptic account of Ravel's ''La Valse,'' in which civilization as we know it ends in 3/4 time.
At the end came ''Make Our Garden Grow'' from ''Candide'' by a true son of Symphony Hall, Leonard Bernstein. This was nicely sung by tenor Gregory Turay, soprano Cynthia Clarey, perilously perched on stiletto heels, and the full-throated Tanglewood Festival Chorus. This Coplandesque piece seemed a fitting close to a century because it hymns dedication to a future founded on experience, hard work, discipline, and humility - the qualities that built Symphony Hall.
This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 10/16/2000.
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he four-day celebration of the 100th birthday of Symphony Hall brought a gala concert designed to celebrate the many kinds of music the beloved redbrick building and its audiences have experienced during the last century. Built as a ''Temple of Music,'' Symphony Hall and its managers have been remarkably ecumenical in welcoming just about every kind of music and performer that could come up with the rent.