Symphony Hall

Last night I attended a concert at Boston's famous Symphony Hall. Despite having watched in my youth "Evenings at Pops" and telecasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Seiji Ozawa, music director, as William Pierce always added) and thinking I had a pretty good idea of what the hall looked like, I was completely surprised to discover a gallery of statuary above the uppermost balcony. What a crazy thing! I was not sure whether the statues were meant to be listening in rapt attention, or whether they portrayed audience members petrified by boredom. (Above, the picture I took with the lousy camera of my cell phone.)

The hall lived up to its renowned reputation. It's a nice antidote to our overly bright New York halls, and that includes renovated Carnegie. The acoustic flatters the orchestra and hides blemishes such as lapses in ensemble or shrillness in violins or high winds.

We in New York City are so used to trumpeting our best-in-everythingness that we take on, despite all our cosmopolitanism, a kind of provincialism. So it is with some humility that I have to admit that the concert experience I had last night was superior in many ways to some recent concert outings of mine in New York City.

Let's start with the program book. Rather than the useless throwaways that litter our concert halls, the BSO's program is produced by the BSO itself. It features a long essay on the concert program, not a puff piece about upcoming events. Steven Ledbetter's program notes are extensive and well written and contain a guide to further reading (and listening). No where is there a presumption of cultural or musical illiteracy.

Levine, much to his credit, eschews "thematic" programming, although the pieces he chose for Thursday's concert had much in common: Mozart's Symphony No. 29 in A; Berg's Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin with Thirteen Wind Instruments; and Brahms's Serenade No. 2, in A. All three pieces are for reduced forces; all of them are by composers who were resident in Vienna for much of their careers; and while the Berg is atonal, it is anchored, if not in the key, than on the note A.

Levine is a great conductor because he brings a forceful musical personality to everything he touches. (How deep that musical personality goes is another matter.) He is a master of dramatic momentum, and he knows how to unleash the fullness of an orchestra's sound without losing textural clarity. At their best, Levine's performances bring together intensity and richness of sound, while still maintaining enough flexibility to bring out a musical detail. (I write this as someone who has probably heard live more Levine performances than those of any other conductor--most of those performances at the Met).

The danger with this approach is that not every piece of music sustains dramatic momentum. A case in point is the Berg Chamber Concerto. The last movement, with its abrupt stoppages and whispered coda, resists the usual musical narrative. Levine really could not recover after an explosive first movement and a deeply felt, ruminative second; the last movement had nowhere left to go. Perhaps in future performances, Levine will solve this problem.

To the Mozart, Levine brought the zest and vigor that is his custom in such music; the Andante especially was beautifully played, marred only by too-loud horns towards the end. The central movement in the Brahms is its sublime Adagio, and Levine resisted the temptation to draw it out endlessly, instead eliciting ravishing playing from the orchestra and letting the music make its point.

I can attest to what has been said of Levine lately: that he has revitalized the BSO, and vice versa; that he has managed to keep off most of the weight he recently shed; and that he is bringing a new seriousness and a commitment to modern and contemporary works to these concerts. Bostonians are lucky to have music-making of such a high level, and such a great hall to hear it in.