(photo: Steve Sherman)
How was the Boston Symphony Orchestra supposed to bail itself out, with a music director too ill to conduct three consecutive Carnegie Hall programs designed and commissioned especially for and by him? Department of oy oy oy.
It was also announced that the coming summer at Tanglewood would be the end of James Levine’s tenure with the orchestra. So whichever unknown last-minute substitutes were corralled knew they were being looked over with an eye to their future with the BSO. As if there weren’t enough tension.
I caught the first--remarkable, intriguingly problematic--concert of the three, and the last, which approached triumph.
The first, in which Levine-fave German violinist Christian Tetzlaff, grown and continuing to grow, had the stamina and musicianship to be a triple-threat soloist. There was a Mozart rondo for violin, a single-movement Harrison Birtwistle violin concerto (premiere commission) and a Bartok violin concerto. Assigning a BSO assistant conductor made sense: they cover rehearsals--sitting up front marking the score--under the tutelage of Levine, a state-of-the-art mentor, and no one else could learn the Birtwistle in that short time. (Perhaps at any time, though that may not be fair to say.)
BSO subscription concerts are usually festive, as listeners whose summer homes are near the players’ encounter their mascots in New York, and run down the aisle to reach up to the stage to shake hands. This program, however, only the ever-questing Levine--whose audience trusts him to musically explain it all for them--could have carried off. In his absence there were seating gaps, and an air of apprehension.
The gracefully athletic Brazilian-born Marcelo Lehninger got the short (or long) conducting straw, and acquitted himself well. Very well. After the sweet Mozart warmup rondo came the hateful (heavens, who wrote that nasty word!)--I mean complex, thorny, percussion-rich Birtwistle. Good this is not a review, because I fell into a sound-resistant sleep. The intellect and success of Birtwistle, a knighted British composer in his 70's, deserves more than I could say of this piece.
Best thing was how easy and Copland-like the following Bartok Violin Concerto seemed. I’m old enough to remember people walking out of Bartok. This inspired choice and order was the absolute prize example of how if we don’t have a present we won’t have a past. So bless them all: Tetzlaff, Lehninger, the game orchestra and three composers.
To lead the third concert, Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, the BSO turned to the Met and scooped up 32-year-old Andris Nelsons, a Latvian protege of Mariss Jansons who happened to be in New York conducting “Queen of Spades,” and, I’m told, carrying the production.
How wonderful was his Mahler! During the grandly elegaic first movement, which summed up Mahler’s harmony, structure, ecstasy and death wishes, one wondered where the 90-minute work could go from there. Nelsons eloquently showed where, in delicate-to-coarsely jolly middle movements and the timeless last movement, whose restlessness, resignation and acceptance held the audience spellbound in silent stillness, as the final notes floated to the stratosphere.
OK, there were assorted dinks in the orchestra for which Leonard Bernstein (that surpassing Mahlerist) would have faulted the conductor, but as a last-minute job, the concert was a tribute to composer and conductor.
Tears in my eyes were probably because it was so good, or maybe because I was rooting for Nelsons, and in both concerts had a measure of reassurance about this noble orchestra’s future.