Levine dazzles at Tanglewood

LENOX - James Levine has arrived at Tanglewood.

The Boston Symphony's new music director, the first American-born maestro in the orchestra's history, led the Symphony, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, American Boychoir, and a stellar array of soloists in Mahler's Symphony No. 8 Friday evening.

The performance was a baptism of fire for the Koussevitzky Music Shed. From the opening E-flat chords from the majestic 1940 Aeolian-Skinner organ to the final triumphal orchestral flourish, Levine and his massed forces swept the adoring crowd (many of whom greeted his appearance on the podium with a standing ovation) to a higher plane.

Mahler's transcendant marriage of the medieval Latin hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus" to the final scene of Goethe's "Faust" was the perfect work to present at Tanglewood on such a momentous occasion. Revered for more than half a century as a unique, idyllic artistic locus for the known and unknowable, the human and super-human, Tanglewood's organic outgrowth from nature resonates deeply with Mahler's creative cosmos.

Levine's close association (as music director of the Metropolitan Opera) with great singing and great singers surely factored into his selection of the so-called "Symphony of a Thousand," with its enormous choral contingent and eight demanding vocal solo roles for both his inaugural Boston concerts with the orchestra and his first Tanglewood concert as music director (he first conducted the BSO in 1972).

There was some great singing to be heard on Friday. A high point, literally as well as vocally, was the entrance of soprano Heidi Grant Murphy, perched high above stage right, singing as the Mater Gloriosa, "Come, Lift you unto loftier spheres, if he (Faust) understands you, he will follow," her voice every bit as celestially arresting as when she recorded the piece in 1991 with Robert Shaw.

Another voice in common with the Shaw recording was that of Deborah Voigt, whose powerful instrument sailed expressively over the orchestra as "Una Poenitentium" (the woman formerly known as Gretchen in the Faust drama).

Dramatic soprano Susan Neves made an auspicious BSO debut Friday as the "Magna peccatrix." The two mezzo-soprano roles were ably undertaken by Yvonne Naef and Jane Henschel, the latter substituting on short notice for Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who withdrew due to illness. Of the male soloists, baritone Eike Wilm Schulte was the most compelling, bringing a sense of true rapturous understanding to his declamation of the "Pater Ecstaticus'" paean to Love. Tenor Johan Botha (in his BSO debut) and bass-baritone John Relyea completed the roster of fine soloists.

John Oliver's Tanglewood Festival Chorus gave its customary impressive performance, 180 singers standing and sitting as one, singing their substantial portion of the 80-minute score from memory, and effecting admirably crisp diction throughout a vast dynamic range from barely audible to loud enough to blow your hair back.

Fernando Malvar-Ruiz's American Boychoir, 50 cherubs centered in the vast choral congregation, gamely sang through Mahler's dense orchestration, urging Faust ever higher.

And the orchestra - what a sound! Strings at once creamy and steely in their delicious presence, brass as brilliant and profound as the voice of God, plangent woodwinds, a vast percussion battery, piano, organ and four harps, all ready to turn on a dime under Levine's minimal but pointed direction. From the most poignant chamber music, punctuated by a feather-light brush of the crash cymbals to the full ensemble's apocalyptic, glorious chaos, the Tanglewood audience got the full measure of the Boston Symphony on Friday evening, and witnessed the beginning of an era.