Thinking small, winning big
By Andrew L. Pincus, Special to the Eagle, Monday August 23, 2010
LENOX – In music as in life, victories can be won as much through grace as power.
Ludovic Morlot, a former assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, returned to the Tanglewood podium Friday night in a program of small pieces with a small orchestra. It was a small success only in the sense that in music like this, big is the enemy of small.
Morlot arrived as the recently appointed director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, a sizable plum and his first directorship. Whether by design or coincidence, he followed another former assistant conductor who has turned into a success story, Robert Spano, to the podium.
Where the American Spano went splashy five days earlier in a mostly Gershwin program, Morlot, who is French, struck an intimate tone in a mix of pieces mostly coming out of France. He also drew on the excellencies of two other Tanglewood icons, soprano Dawn Upshaw and composer Osvaldo Golijov.
Upshaw, sounding radiant again after her recent bout with cancer, sang seven of the “Songs of the Auvergne” and Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra. To the country coquetry and humor of the folk song arrangements (by Joseph Canteloube) from the French region, she brought a touching undercurrent of heartbreak. To the dark- hued songs by the Argentine-born Golijov, whose music she has championed, she brought a haunting sense of tragedy.
Golijov’s songs grow in intensity on rehearing. Throbbing accompaniments in the orchestra underlie luminous vocal lines. The long postlude to the first song, a lullaby, seems to overbalance the song itself, but the middle song, ” Moon Colorless,” has a sorrowing, valedictory quality reminiscent of Mahler.
In Mozart’s ” Paris” Symphony, No. 31, Morlot cultivated small- scaled brilliance, though the evening’s autumnal chill crept into the orchestra’s intonation. Ravel’s complete “Mother Goose” suite, on the other hand, was all gossamer and enchantment, right up to Sleeping Beauty’s awakening at the end.
The weekend’s two other concerts also employed chambersized orchestras.
On Saturday night, Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki, making her Tanglewood (but not BSO) debut, provided a reminder of how difficult it is for a new conductor to take a fresh approach to music on Tanglewood’s tight rehearsal schedule.
Malkki, who is nothing if not athletic on the podium, had some interesting ideas about Mendelssohn and Beethoven. For one thing, her tempos were often unusually fast or unusually slow. Everything was firmly in place but with little leeway for nuance, the playing was more by the numbers than illuminating.
Mendelssohn’s ” Midsummer Night’s Dream” Overture was oversized and driven. In Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, the evening’s finale, the extremes of tempo didn’t always mesh but the overall conception – Beethoven in an unpredictable, rollicking mood – came through.
Star violinist Joshua Bell brought his longtime recital partner, pianist Jeremy Denk, with him for a rare performance of a Mendelssohn double concerto in D minor.
If Mendelssohn at 17 created a masterpiece with his Shakespearean overture, Mendelssohn at 14 was still learning his trade in this over-long concerto. It is essentially a duo sonata with the orchestra popping in now and then for a visit.
There are some pretty tunes but not much else happens. Not much happened, that is, except spellbinding displays by the wellmatched soloists. Bell finished off with a sweetly singing solo line in Beethoven’s Romance No. 2, and Malkki had the accompaniments well in hand.
Bell, who helped to attract a large audience, is rightly a Tanglewood regular. By Denk’s feats both here and elsewhere, he proved that he merits a solo trip back in his own right.
On Sunday, another conductor made his debut and another celebrity violinist brought his partner – in this case his violin-ist wife – along for a debut.
The program had to be the strangest of the season: a hodgepodge of Pops nuggets and mismatched classical pieces. At the center was the svelte fiddling of the couple, Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony.
Though not tested by a major work, Costa Rica- born Giancarlo Guerrero, director of the Nashville Symphony, had the BSO playing well on the rainy afternoon. His principal pieces were Pulitzer Prize- winner Jennifer Higdon’s “blue cathedral,” a rapturous evocation of a glass cathedral in the sky, and a “Carmen” suite in a hot-blooded performance.
Lagniappe was Suppe’s oncepopular ” Poet and Peasant” Overture, which had Guerrero swaying to a waltz beat and principal cellist Jules Eskin delivering a classy solo.
Shaham and Anthony tossed off crowd-pleasing razzle-dazzle in three Sarasate showpieces with an orchestral backdrop – one piece for each and one as a duo – and teamed in Bach’s Double Concerto. The concerto performance was more a showcase for buttery-smooth solo work than an advertisement for Bach style.
The program book noted that one of the Sarasate pieces, “Song of the Nightingale,” was once performed by comedian Jack Benny as soloist with the BSO. Enough said.
