LENOX, Mass., July 16 — On July 7 James Levine, with highly praised performances of Schoenberg’s early Chamber Symphony and Beethoven’s mighty Ninth, reassured the public here at Tanglewood — not to mention the worried administrators of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — that he was back in action. A serious shoulder injury and the resulting surgery had kept him off the podium for four months. Clearly his shoulder had mended. He had lost weight and was looking better than he had in 10 years. But what about his stamina?
Over the weekend Mr. Levine put even those concerns to rest with stunning performances of two daunting works from the first decade of the 20th century. On Friday night he conducted the Boston Symphony in Schoenberg’s two-hour “Gurrelieder,” an ecstatic score for huge orchestral forces, vocal soloists and chorus, a monster of a piece to rehearse.
And talk about rehearsing! On Saturday night Mr. Levine conducted an exceptional roster of singers and the students of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in a concert performance Richard Strauss’s “Elektra.” For all their talent and experience, most of these young musicians have not come close to playing an opera like “Elektra” with a conductor as versed in the genre as Mr. Levine. He devoted nearly 17 hours to rehearsing the orchestra in this blazing, complex and still shocking score. The hard work paid off. Seldom has a frenzied ovation been more deserved.
Friday night’s concert began with Mr. Levine conducting the Boston Symphony and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in a performance of “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,” the wistfully beautiful fourth movement of Brahms’s “German Requiem,” performed in memory of the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died on July 3 at 52. Surely she would have been pleased by Mr. Levine’s performance, so natural, unforced and directly expressive: qualities that exemplified her own affecting artistry.
Concertgoers who do not take to Schoenberg’s path-breaking atonal and 12-tone works are often astonished by “Gurrelieder,” which was written when he was in his mid-20’s, though not orchestrated and performed complete until 1913. This breathtaking work, with it Wagnerian sweep, lushly chromatic harmonic language and sumptuous orchestral colors, sounds like a last gasp of late German Romanticism.
Conceived as an epic orchestral song cycle, “Gurrelieder” tells the mythic tale of a valiant king, Waldemar, who falls hopelessly in love with a winsome young princess, Tove. The king’s jealous wife, outraged by this illicit relationship, has Tove killed. Driven mad by grief, Waldemar curses God and roams the night with an avenging army of the dead.
While in this work Schoenberg pays tribute to his musical roots, he also taps into the elements of unhinged tonality and nascent modernism that had been lurking in the late-Germanic Romantic style for some time. Mr. Levine’s lucid and commanding performance, though rhapsodic and, when called for, frenzied, uncannily drew out the hints of radicalism that run through the score.
Even in the orchestral prelude, which evokes the natural world with plangent harmonies, glowing strings and twittering woodwinds, Mr. Levine paid heed to the harmonically restless bass lines, glints of dissonance and ominous stirrings amid the musical bliss. The orchestral and choral textures are often daringly thick in this music. Schoenberg had to manufacture special manuscript paper with 48 staffs to notate the work. (That oversize manuscript is on display this summer at the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan.) Yet though the textures are dense, they are never gloppy. In a good performance all the inner voices and details should come through, and this performance was superb.
The Boston Symphony continues to sound like one of the glorious ensembles of the world under Mr. Levine. He was joined by the impressive Tanglewood Festival Chorus and some noted vocal colleagues from the opera world.
The heldentenor Johan Botha brought clarion sound and tireless stamina to the punishing role of Waldemar. Christine Brewer, who is quickly establishing herself as a major dramatic soprano on the international scene, was vocally gleaming as Tove, and the mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier sang the Wood Dove with dusky tone and sultry allure. Matthew Polenzani , the appealing lyric tenor, stayed in character yet sang with elegance as Klaus the Jester. The veteran tenor Waldemar Kmentt was entrancing in the bitterly comic role of the Speaker.
For “Elektra” on Saturday, Mr. Levine had the young Tanglewood musicians playing like a great opera orchestra on an inspired night. With these students he knew routine would be impossible, that the performance would have a built-in, edge-of-the-seat involvement. So while demanding incisive execution, he encouraged the players to let go, to capture the style and sweep of this gnashing and frenzied score, Strauss’s most radical work.
To provide an admirable example of professionalism, Mr. Levine invited Raymond Gniewek, the retired concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, to take part during the rehearsals and performance, not as concertmaster but sitting amid the first violins. The best compliment I can pay the orchestra is to say that I was so enthralled by the musical and dramatic intensity of this performance that for long stretches I forgot I was hearing a student ensemble.
The dramatic soprano Lisa Gasteen gave a vocally fearless and chilling portrayal of the notoriously difficult title role, bringing cool power to Elektra’s outbursts of avenging fury yet melting sadness at the appearance of Orest, her exiled brother whom she had feared dead. (Elektra is counting on Orest to kill their mother, Klytemnestra, for murdering their father, Agamemnon.)
The bass-baritone Alan Held was a noble and stentorian Orest. Ms. Brewer, fresh from “Gurrelieder,” was Chrysothemis, who pleads with her sister Elektra to let go of the lust for revenge that is ruining both their lives. For all her shimmering power, Ms. Brewer was utterly poignant in the scene when Chrysothemis tells Elektra, yes, we come from a house that is cursed, the house of Agamemnon is an accursed place, but still I want a life, I want children, even if their father is a peasant.
The veteran mezzo-soprano Felicity Palmer gave the young orchestra musicians a lesson in uncompromising artistic intensity with her searing portraying of the guilt-ridden Klytemnestra. And it was good to see the honored Wagnerian tenor Siegfried Jerusalem back, even in the small but crucial role of Aegisth, Klytemnestra’s calculating lover.
Last summer Mr. Levine conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in a gripping Wagner program: Act I of “Die Walküre” and Act III of “Götterdämmerung.” Next summer, no doubt, he will direct another concert performance of an opera with the student orchestra. Even without knowing the choice, you should plan to be there if you can.