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AN ENTHRALLING, UNTRADITIONAL VERSION OF BEETHOVEN'S NINTH
Author(s): Richard Dyer, Globe Staff
Date: August 26, 2002
Page: B10
Section: Arts
LENOX - The irresistible combination of the final BSO concert of the summer season, a glorious day suffused with sunlight, and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony led by Sir Roger Norrington drew 12,270 people to Tanglewood yesterday afternoon. Sir Neville Marriner was not as lucky with the weather Saturday night; it was rainy and cold for his program. The eve ning's debut soloist heated things up though. Claudio Bohorquez, born in Germany of Uruguayan and Paraguayan parentage, is a prize-winning young cellist and protege of Mstislav Rostropovich.
Tall, thin, hair flying, he's got the personal charisma of a rock star. It was said that he showed up for rehearsal in peach-colored shoes, so one was looking forward to seeing them, but for the concert he chose basic black and white - he dispensed with the traditional jacket, however. It was probably not fair for him to make his debut with the Schumann Concerto, a beautiful but problematic work with a message that is difficult to deliver to a large audience. Bohorquez has an astonishing gift for the instrument, comparable maybe even to the young Yo-Yo Ma's: a comprehensively fluid technique guiding a big, supple tone (he plays on the Gofriller cello that once belonged to the legendary Pablo Casals). What he does not yet command is the unique outgoing inwardness that was part of Ma's musical personality from the beginning. In the Schumann he was expressive, but generically so; one didn't feel an organic identification with this particular music equal to his organic identification with the cello. The instrumental mastery and sympathetic personality did connect with the audience, however, and Bohorquez was allowed the rare privilege of an encore, a movement of unaccompanied Bach notable for rhythmic vitality, subtle interplay of dynamics, and an almost-vocal use of the bow. Marriner led off with a sprightly performance of Rossini's overture to "L'Itali ana in Algeri," in which there was some sparkling woodwind work (Linda Toote on piccolo) and closed with Elgar's "Enigma Variations," done with a welcome transparency and lightness. There was plenty of breadth, dynamic range, and nobility of feeling in the "Nimrod" Variation, but for once the rest of the piece didn't hang in your ear the way roast beef and Yorkshire pudding can sit in your stomach. James Conlon was on the podium Friday night for an all-Mozart program featuring Peter Serkin in the G-Major Piano Concerto, K. 453. Serkin was in one of his quirkier moods, but his manipulations of voicing and teasings of tempo were often illuminating, and so was his understanding of the pianist's dual role as pianist and chamber-music partner. Conlon kept ev ery thing together, which took some doing. He also led two major symphonies, No. 39 in E-flat, K. 453, and the "Linz," both with the full complement of repeats. The effect of the full-length "Linz," like James Levine's full "Jupiter" last season, may force reexamination of the old cliches about how Bruckner, Wagner, and Mahler put music onto a vast new time scale. Conlon and the orchestra were vigilant and energetic, if not always tidy; they were, however, always operatically expressive, and especially in the slow movement of the "Linz."
Norrington's Beethoven Ninth was thoroughly enthralling, although it aroused more enthusiasm in the audience and chorus than it appeared to in the orchestra. Gone was just about everything traditional in the interpretation of this central icon of Western music - the familiar speedings up and slowings down, the pauses for emphasis, the special effects. Instead we heard unusually close attention to what Beethoven actually wrote, to tempos, balances, tempo relationships. Reduction of vibrato and a dramatic reseating of the orchestra (second violins and violas together on the right, basses off to the left, brasses high on the right) led to new balances and emphases and to countless fresh realizations of details, and of the interconnections of detail, of harmony, and of line (how clean and beautiful the basses sounded when they entered with the fa mous theme of the finale). One could hear the atomic structure of the piece, the collisions and explosions that result in a universe of joy. The trio of the scherzo, for example, was slower than we usually hear it, but in a new and convincing relationship to the tempo of the sections that surround it; played this way, the music anticipates the character of the culminating Ode to Joy. Throughout the finale one was conscious of solo counterpoint and counterplay, the proclamatory role of the trumpet in the Turkish march, the drama of the trombones' entrance at "Be embraced - ye millions!" Whatever the players thought of what Norrington asked them to do, they delivered it, and so did the strong quartet of soloists (Christine Brewer, Jill Grove, Stanford Olsen, and Nathan Berg) and the tireless, wholehearted Tanglewood Festival Chorus. And it was easy to agree with a veteran chorus member who said after the dress rehearsal, "Who knows how many gazillion times we have sung this, but I have just heard things I've never heard before, and it made me think, `Well, yes, this is what Beethoven must have meant.' "
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