|
LENOX -- You can listen to Mozart as an escape from the world's cares, but he won't always make it easy for you. Sometimes there's an undertow of sadness.
With one exception, it was the happy-faced Mozart on display at Tanglewood on Saturday night in a varied program of his music. The evening's finale was not the melancholy Symphony No. 40 but its companion piece, No. 39, in which never a cloud crosses the sky.
The exception to the rule was the French soprano Veronique Gens, one of two soloists making Tanglewood debuts. In two concert arias, she plunged into the travails of women forsaken by love.
The other newcomer was the 24-year-old American pianist Jonathan Biss, who, mercifully, turned out to be the antithesis of the fire-breathing young virtuoso. Genially presiding over a chamber-size Boston Symphony Orchestra was Neville Marriner, an old Mozart hand.
It's no surprise that one of Gens' main operatic roles is Donna Elvira in Mozart's "Don Giovanni," because the second -- and by far more complex -- of her arias was "Ch'io
mi scordi di te?" ("You want me to forget you?"). This is Elvira country: a woman, still mad for the man who has abandoned her, pouring out her grief in flights of melody.
Gens ranged through the florid part and rapidly shifting moods with dramatic fury, achieving a particularly striking effect through changes of vocal color in the final words of the recitative, "Ah! di dolor morrei" ("Ah, I'd die of grief"). Another enhancement was the piano obbligato, played by Biss. In its gentle tones, it seemed to offer solace, like Orpheus calming the furies.
In the other aria, "Or che il cielo a me ti rende" (Now that heaven restores you to me"), Gens banished lovers' sorrow within a narrower dramatic range.
Biss, though a protégé of Leon Fleisher, sounded like his teacher only in the breadth of his musical intelligence. In the Piano Concerto No. 23 -- even in its cadenza -- his playing avoided any taint of show, going for the purely musical qualities, which are rich and many.
Especially in the farther reaches of the Shed, the music's
drama sounded somewhat underplayed. But the adagio, with its dialogues with the woodwinds, was moonlit, and the finale wore a smile. Here and in the arias, Marriner and the orchestra tailored accompaniments to fit.
The program opened with a lively romp through the "Marriage of Figaro" Overture and closed with a workmanlike account of the 39th symphony.
Marriner seemed to have some interesting ideas about the symphony but the cautious playing was reluctant to leave a comfort zone.
Anybody who writes a "Grand Concerto for Percussion and Keyboards" had better be able to deliver on the promise. If anybody can carry off such a grandiose scheme, Gunther Schuller can.
At a Saturday prelude concert, the Boston composer conducted the world premiere of his four-movement work with an ensemble of Tanglewood Music Center fellows. The conception was grand in scale, indeed. More than 100 instruments all but overflowed the stage of Ozawa Hall, and it took 11 black-clad musicians to man them.
The piece proved more symphonic than concerto -- like, with the keyboards -- a piano was placed far back on the stage -- merely part of the ensemble. Nor, except in the final blastoff, did all those noisemakers raise a hue and cry. The sounds mostly occurred at the dark, pulsating end of the spectrum, drawing you in by keeping you at a little distance -- a Schuller trademark.
Performed in honor of Schuller's 80th birthday, the grand concerto was commissioned at the behest of BSO percussionist Frank Epstein, who organized the program. He also conducted two shorter, scientifically titled pieces, Edward Cohen's "Acid Rain" and Joan Tower's "DNA."
Tower's piece, bonding sounds like double helixes, proved an interesting study in contrasts, sometimes Asian in effect. On the other hand, Cohen, seeking to evoke an Asian gamelan, sank into repetitiveness. The effect of acid rain, perhaps.
Yesterday's BSO concert, conducted by Rafael Fruehbeck de Burgos, waded fearlessly into
the world's cares. It went from the tragedy of three choral works by Brahms to the triumph of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
Though composed at various times, the Brahms works -- "Nanie," "Gesang der Parzen" ("Song of the Fates") and "Schicksalslied" ("Song of Destiny") -- come from the world of his more familiar "German Requiem." Resignation prevails, not in the face of death as in the requiem, but at the hands of the indifferent gods. You can revel in both the luminous beauty of the sound and the mood of calm acceptance.
It was to that world that Fruehbeck, the BSO and John Oliver's splendid Tanglewood Festival Chorus transported the willing listener on the sunny afternoon. This was noble music, nobly played and sung.
The Beethoven Fifth, absent from Tanglewood for nine years, seemed a conquest of the very fates to whose cruelty Brahms submitted. Fruehbeck pushed the BSO to the limit, especially in the victorious finale, but the electric playing he elicited justified bringing the formerly overplayed symphony back from a deserved rest.
The Spanish conductor, a BSO favorite, had many interesting ideas, such as making the horns sing out in their important parts. Most conspicuously, he tried to go directly from one movement into the next to create an unbroken narrative arch. The idea was derailed after the first movement by overeager applauders, but otherwise heightened the momentum.
The week's attendance totaled 27,407, a decline from 32,075 last year, the BSO reported. There were 812 Tuesday, 1,264 Wednesday, 5,431 Friday, 2,768 at the open rehearsal, 8,776 Saturday and 8,356 yesterday. The figures do not include attendance at Festival of Contemporary Music programs.
|
RETURN TO TOP
