Wiz Ozawa steals BSO Shed show
By Keith Powers
Monday, August 7, 2006 - Updated: 01:58 AM EST
Sometimes, a performance with more than 250 musicians, including some of the greatest players and singers in the world, pivots around one single performer.
So it was yesterday evening in the Shed at Tanglewood, when a performance artist masquerading as a conductor, Seiji Ozawa, stole the show with a mesmerizing rendition of Mahler’s great second symphony, “The Resurrection,” with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and soloists Nathalie Stutzmann and Heidi Grant Murphy.
The “Resurrection,” a name Mahler never gave to the symphony, is perfectly appropriate to the music’s theme - the death and resurrection of Mahler’s hero, a fictional creation that he made and killed off during his first symphony. The second, which was written conterminously - at least in part - with the first, completes the fictional heroic figure, guiding him through his funeral, his mourning in the magnificent march movement, and ultimately, his symbolic resurrection.
Mahler was not about small ideas, and none of his symphonies are, either. The second pays homage at times to Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, his violin concerto, and certainly in its format - mixing chorus and soloists with orchestra - to the grandiose Ninth Symphony. It’s a work of majestic sweep, with compelling orchestration and musical ideas that are shared all over the stage.
But in the end, it came down to the inimitable Ozawa, making a return to the stage after more than six months on the disabled list (This has been the year of broken-down conductors, hasn’t it?) with a terrible case of shingles.
Ozawa lives for the music, and it would be a mistake to underestimate his extraordinary memory, his understanding of the complexities and his deep desire to make it all come alive.
The score was on his desk, but sat there like a tribute to the composer, never touched. If nearly two hours of music can possibly sound spontaneous, this did.
Stutzmann and Murphy sang responsively in their minor solo roles, and the chorus, as usual, sang with nuance and clarity. The orchestra was magnificent, and the roaring from the crowd carried deep into the Tanglewood night.
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