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Reviews of Lance's Tanglewood Festival Chorus Performances |
 
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MUSIC REVIEW Pops picks for holiday performance mostly score
By Ellen Pfeifer, Globe Correspondent, 12/12/2002
Answer: The Symphony Hall stage is garishly festooned with greenery, red bows, twinkling white icicle lights, enormous ersatz carriage lanterns, and snowflake cutouts; Pops-style tables and chairs have replaced the more severe rows of seats; the menu of refreshments includes eggnog spiked with rum; and Keith Lockhart, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus have turned their attention to carols, Santa songs, and winter-weather medleys. Such reassuring signs of the season marked the opening of the Pops 2002 holiday concert series on Tuesday night. Just back from a national tour with the Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Lockhart led a program in which (mostly) religious-themed music was grouped in the first half, while lighter, secular fare dominated the second. A loud and thickly scored arrangement of ''Hark! The Herald Angels Sing'' served as the curtain-raiser, ushering in a more restrained, nearly Baroque-scaled ''For Unto Us a Child Is Born'' from ''Messiah.'' Humperdinck's Prelude to ''Hansel and Gretel,'' which opens with a touching brass chorale that foreshadows the lost children's prayer, received a warmly burnished performance. (The orchestra, of course, has this music in its fingers; its alter ego, the Boston Symphony, played the complete opera just two weeks ago under Marek Janowski.) An interesting curiosity in the first half was a setting of Robert Frost's poem, ''Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,'' from ''Frostiana,'' a choral cycle by Randall Thompson. It is, of course, Thompson's ''Alleluia'' that is sung every summer at the opening of the Tanglewood Music Center. This nocturnal, moonstruck piece, which follows the verse structure of the poem, keeps threatening to turn into ''Greensleeves.'' After intermission, the orchestra and chorus extolled the pleasures of cold and snowy weather. Saxophonist Mike Monaghan got a chance to shine in ''Kije Takes a Ride,'' an arrangement after the Prokofiev ''Lieutenant Kije'' orchestral suite. There was a truly terrible, tarted-up conflation of the ''Hallelujah'' Chorus, ''Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,'' and ''Gloria in Excelsis Deo'' with the dubious title ''Joy!'' Santa Claus paid his annual call - with a ringing cellphone attached to his belt. He had lots of news to share: he's driving his first new sleigh in 500 years. The phone is just one of the amenities on this vehicle that also include heated leather seats, ''elf-size air bags,'' and a global positioning system. (''Rudolph isn't too crazy about that.'') Furthermore, Santa has signed to play 007 in the next James Bond film - with a love interest to be portrayed by ''Holly Berry.'' Ho, ho, ho. What would Christmas be without this hokum? Holiday Pops The Boston Pops Orchestra Keith Lockhart, conductor Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver, conductor At: Symphony Hall, Tuesday night (through Dec. 30)
This story ran on page B13 of the Boston Globe on 12/12/2002.
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© Copyright 2002 New York Times Company |
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uestion: How do you know the Christmas season is upon you?