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Reviews of Lance's Tanglewood Festival Chorus Performances |
   
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MUSIC REVIEW BSO recalls a journalist and artist
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 10/11/2002
Sir Andrew Davis conducted the world premiere of Judith Weir's ''Moon and Sun'' in London in 1995 and its American premiere last night. This delightful piece catches a poem of Emily Dickinson in the bright, glistening net of its intersecting sounds. The poem is plain-spoken, droll, and oddly personal, and then it sidesteps into the sublime as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to do. Weir's imagination and craftsmanship touched all these dimensions of the poem in music that stretches across a vast span of time (from the medieval period to Stravinsky) and of space. Sir Andrew, the orchestra, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus proved persuasive advocates, and the audience gave Weir a nice welcome when she came onstage - and applauded long enough to bring her back. The French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard has a choirboy's mischievous face; behind his glasses lie soulful, searching eyes. Both qualities illuminated Ravel's Concerto in G. Aimard is a supreme virtuoso of touch and gradations of color, and it was unusual to hear these qualities brought to bear on the outer movements of the concerto, which are usually played in a brash, clattery way, as if they were actually by Gershwin rather than merely influenced by the urban energy of the American composer. Aimard played these movements as chamber music, interacting with wit and finesse to each of Ravel's ravishing and unexpected touches of orchestration; the glissandos slipped like rain under a windshield wiper. The slow movement, on the other hand, is a homage to Bach, an endless melody unspooling over a steady bass, like the one in the middle of Bach's ''Italian Concerto.'' Aimard balanced directness and subtlety, feeling and restraint, and the sound was moonstruck. One wind player forgot that this is not the movement with honking in it, but Robert Sheena's English horn was eloquent, and Davis and the orchestra abetted all of Aimard's sensitive and spirited intentions. The program ended with the cantata Prokofiev developed from his score to Sergei Eisenstein's famous film ''Alexander Nevsky.'' Folk music is one inspiration here; so are the unforgettable images of the film - the violas slash and you feel how slippery the ice is on the frozen lake that has become a battlefield. Nancy Maultsby was the soloist for the ''Field of the Dead'' movement, singing in the now-traditional Mother Russia deep contralto, complete with wobble. One longed for the earlier approach exemplified by Jennie Tourel on the first American recording - this is the lament of a young girl who has passed from innocence into experience. Twenty-six years after his BSO debut, Davis still looks spry and youthful, and of course he's a total pro. He let the music create its images, tell its stirring story, and whip up its own excitement with trying to impose more upon it. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, performing from memory and in Russian, sang its heart out; this was the true sound of Mother Russia. Boston Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, guest conductor. At: Symphony Hall, last night (repeats this afternoon and tomorrow and Tuesday nights).
This story ran on page C15 of the Boston Globe on 10/11/2002.
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© Copyright 2002 New York Times Company |
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any concerts around the world paid tribute last night to the life and mission of the reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and slain in Pakistan earlier this year. One of those was in Symphony Hall, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra's program felt particularly fitting. Pearl played music, and loved many kinds of music and all musicians. The BSO presented three pieces that became original by assimilating different musical cultures, and all three depended on the common touch, the voice of humanity in a world that is not always humane.
