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.

Me and Marcel P.

Listening last night to the third act of the Met's live broadcast, on Sirius, of Lucia, I thought about Marcel Proust, who, about a hundred years ago, subscribed to a service that allowed Parisians to listen to performances from the stage of the Opera in Paris over their telephones. Must have been the perfect entertainment for the reclusive opera lover in his cork-lined room. And here I was, a century later, listening over (DSL) phone lines to live opera.

One question, though: Is there something about the microphone placements or the netcast-sound quality that makes every singer sound like their vibrato is a mile wide in the upper part of their registers? That is how it's sounded to me the last two nights that I've listened, and without a reality check in the hall, it's hard for me to be completely sure of what I heard, so I'll go easy on questions of vibrato.

With that qualification, let me say that I thought Dessay sang with great security and her usual ability to invest every note and ornament with purpose. Giordani sounded fatigued--yes, it's easy to say that, given his heroics over the weekend. Still, his voice was hoarse and sounded effortful--although he was able to command some melting tone and Corelli-like diminuendi. (And had no pitch problems.) Heretical as it may be to say, I wonder if they couldn't have given Giordani a break and dispensed with the Wolf's Glen scene.

It's probably not fair to judge a performance on the basis of one act, but I thought Levine did a swell job. The orchestra sounded much better last night than I'd heard in a while--maybe they're on their best behavior with the music director in the pit? He brought a nice sense of detail to small moments, without being fussy. I loved, for instance, the way the orchestra echoed precisely the inflection of Raimondo's "Eccola" at the start of the Mad Scene. Also, kudos to the decision to do away with the flute obbligato that echoes Lucia's cadenza. To quote from Ashbrook's Donizetti and His Operas:

"Nor should it be assumed that the established tradition of a cadenza with flute obbligato at this point stems from [Fanny] Persiani [the first Lucia]; according to [19th-century music critic and writer Henry] Chorley, she altered her cadenza depending on her vocal health and mood, and since the flute participation must be fixed in advance, it would be highly unlikely that she used it." (Cambridge University Press, paperback edition, 1983, page 376)

How much more haunting is it to have Lucia's solo voice at that moment!

For me, the secret to conducting Donizetti is not to hold the reins too tightly or too slackly. OK, that's a little too easy to say, and I guess the same could be said about many composers. But what I mean is that if you conduct Donizetti's music too vigorously, as though it's prototypical Verdi, it will buckle under the assault. And if you leave out the rhythmic point, then it's simply boring.

Levine knew exactly how to play it, giving flexibility and scope to the singers while still maintaining the music's thrust. The storm that begins the Wolf's Glen scene was not overly wild, burnished even, but still dramatic. The introductory music to the mad scene was not goosed to sound pregnant with meaning. There wasn't the clattering and banging that some conductors bring to scores of this vintage.

I'm looking forward to listening to Annick Massis's Lucia on Otober 25th--she is an impressive coloratura soprano, who sang a wonderful Giullietta with OONY some years ago, and whose performances on various Opera Rara recordings of lesser-known Donizetti scores are superb.