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Reviews of Lance's Tanglewood Festival Chorus Performances |
   
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MUSIC REVIEW Tanglewood programs are a joyful appreciation of Seiji Ozawa's career
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 7/15/2002
The programs were devised to highlight various aspects of Ozawa's life, career, and personality - his serious musicianship and his fascination with American popular culture. The biggest crowd turned out Saturday night for a gala event featuring celebrity soloists and a surprise appearance from Steven Spielberg, who said he wished he could live inside a film the way Ozawa can live inside music. There were remarkable musical moments in the program, including Gil Shaham's exquisite playing of Dvorak's ''Romance'' for violin; Mstislav Rostropovich in Glazunov's ''Chant du menestrel'' (conducted by Federico Cortese, the last of the young conductors Ozawa has mentored with the BSO); a fascinating pair of fanfares by Toru Takemitsu, crudely played; and John Williams conducting his mini-concerto for orchestra, ''For Seiji.'' Other things were fun, or meant to be; the program was enjoyable in small doses, but as it wore on began to feel like a three-hour-and-15-minute bear hug or sloppy kiss. There were charming video tributes to Ozawa, including one in which Williams dazzlingly synchronized a live performance of Berlioz's ''Roman Carnival'' Overture to one of Ozawa's filmed ones. Absent celebrities such as Luciano Pavarotti, Van Cliburn, Andre Previn, Frederica von Stade, Wynton Marsalis, and sumo wrestler Konishiki paid video tribute - Konishiki took down his topknot and let his hair fly the way Ozawa's does when he conducts. Jessye Norman had not recovered from whatever knocked her out Tuesday night and sang a group of pop songs inaudibly, compensating with extravagant gestures - she should have been amplified to match them. Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe visibly cowered when Norman bore down on him singing ''The song ... is you.'' Ozawa, who sat smiling with his family through most of the program, sprinted to the stage to conduct Marcus Roberts in ''Rhapsody in Blue.'' With one undistinguished Tanglewood appearance behind him, the jazz pianist made another, adding free but pedestrian improvisation at various points and simply ignoring the classical dimension that is also part of Gershwin's crossover masterpiece. The audience loved it and him. The BSO entered the various proceedings like good sports, but not everything sounded adequately prepared. Ozawa's introduction to Western music was African-American spirituals - he and his brothers formed a gospel quartet - so the program concluded with a wonderful set from the Boys Choir of Harlem, singing ''Glory hallelu!'' Friday night's concert featured the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and highlighted Ozawa's work with young musicians. In the Dvorak Cello Concerto, Ozawa and the orchestra kept right with Rostropovich, a wayward, self-indulgent, and intermittently eloquent soloist. The fellows of the TMC, who met for the first time just a week ago, are already an orchestra. They delivered a raucous, rollicking performance of Bernstein's ''Candide'' Overture for Cortese and a warm, engaging, and heartfelt account of Brahms's First Symphony for Ozawa. There were remarkable solos, and in their security and balance the brass outplayed what the BSO has accomplished in this piece on many occasions. Sunday afternoon brought sunshine and a large and happy crowd. Ozawa led a blazing account of one of his signature pieces, Berlioz's ''Symphonie fantastique,'' elegantly shaped in the quieter moments, thrillingly exhibitionistic in the rest. At the close he led Everett ''Vic'' Firth forward to a tremendous ovation as Firth closed a magnificent 50-year career with the orchestra. Beethoven's ''Choral Fantasy'' followed with Peter Serkin surging through the piano part with noble rhetoric and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and an impressive team of Ozawa-era soloists hymning the power of music. The concert closed with audience, chorus, soloists, and orchestra singing along with the anthem Randall Thompson composed for Tanglewood in 1940, ''Alleluia'' - the first music Ozawa heard in America, back in 1960. The last of the weekend's many standing ovations followed, the audience clapping in unison. Ozawa has always been a controversial musical figure, sometimes with reason, sometimes not, but he has never lost his hold on the imagination and affection of the public, and he stood there, drinking it all in, and the echo of ''Alleluia'' hung in the air.
This story ran on page B7 of the Boston Globe on 7/15/2002.
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© Copyright 2002 New York Times Company |
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ENOX - Seiji Ozawa arrived at Tanglewood last week as music director and left with a new title, music director laureate. At three concerts and an open rehearsal, 41,210 people assembled to salute him. Thanks to the new title, the message was not ''farewell'' but ''till we meet again.''
