This past weekend gave us a BSO of slightly paired down dimensions, in the middle of which was planted the Pops’ Film Night exercise in scheduling for the largest crowd possible. I will not demure in saying that I did not attend film night; but in fact I don’t think this now annual event at Tanglewood really needs extra publicity. If you went, and it seems a great many of you did, I hope you enjoyed yourselves; and I hope also that you come back some time for a bona fide BSO concert, which Tanglewood is really meant for. I only wish some more of the film-night crowd had spilled over into Sunday afternoon’s attendance, which was treated, along with me, to a delicious offering of Classical music (music of the classical period) if not a particularly talented soloist, for Mozart’s Fourth violin concerto, in Augustin Hadelich. We were, however, introduced to a new batch of zealous and, on balance, pretty impressive young conductors in BSO Associate conductor Marcelo Lehninger, and Juanjo Mena, the latter substituting for the late BSO favorite Rafael Frubeck de Burgos.
Friday’s program was prefaced by another installment of the BSO’s paltry attempt at dumbed-down accessibility, the “UnderScore” concert series. At least this week’s version, featuring BSO violinist Bonnie Bewick, had something to do with the music, and did not descend into hum-drum personal anecdotes, though the extent of Ms. Bewick’s insight seemed to be nothing more than that all of the pieces on Friday’s program had “lots of notes” for the strings.
As I stated two weeks ago, the BSO should dispense with such obviously half-hearted gestures such as the “UnderScore” series, and if they really want to appear more open and accessible to their audience should try advertising a heavily reduced-price Shed ticket program for young people and students, and even to first-time ticket-buyers. Or the Orchestra could think about reducing its general prices for tickets in the Shed, which, because of the building’s lack of any notable arrangement of raked seating, is almost exclusively composed of partial-view seating, including the relatively good seats given to the writer of this review.
Friday’s musical offering began in earnest with Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for String Orchestra,” which, though possessing a number of delightful dance movements, always sounded to me, particularly in the first and last movements, as if it were missing something. Of course, being a string serenade, there is something missing, namely all the instruments in the orchestra that are not strings. But the best works of this genre usually strike the ear as fully orchestrated, though scored just for the strings. Here, particularly in the first movement, “Pezzo in forma di Sonatina,” one felt, at times, as if one were sitting in on a string-sectional rehearsal, not to take away anything from the absolutely charming second movement waltz, and third movement “Elegia.” Maestro Lehninger’s M, which seemed overly austere for the tenor of the first movement “pezzo,” nicely mellowed itself for the remainder of the work, became less percussive, and yet remained wonderfully incisive.
The subsequent offering was Shostakovich’s charming, if not exactly moving, piano concerto No. 1 in C minor, Opus 35, scored for String Orchestra, a prominent trumpet part (the BSO’s excellent Thomas Rolfs) and the French virtuoso Jean-Yves Thibaudet who will play anything, and only seems to play anything, that sounds weird, which is a shame because I should very much like to hear his effortless execution put to use in some of the classical repertoire.
The Shostakovich concerto, however, is neither portentous, nor particularly grating, just a lot of good fun. Here Shostakovich resists the temptation, of which Mahler was a lamentable victim, of confusing weirdness for profundity, a temptation which Shostakovich was not always so keen to resist. Here, however, he manages, quite effectively, to vary the routine — actually quite a lot of appealing material — with the bizarre; and I left my seat for the intermission rather charmed.
After the intermission we were treated to Schumann’s over-scored but, all in all, most successful symphony, the Symphony labeled No. 4 in D minor, here presented in its revised 1851 version. Robert Schumann certainly never suffered for want of good thematic material, and his idiom is in some ways a perfect mix of a sort of Classical strait-forwardness with a deeply Romantic sensibility. But, scoring for symphony orchestra never came naturally to Schumann, and so we are left with a rather primitive orchestration in which the stings play almost non-stop throughout the entire piece.
Nevertheless, much of the music is ravishing. This symphony probably works better than his other three symphonies as a complete whole because of its “cyclic” form: Thematic material in the first movement is restated and redeveloped in the last movement to sort of bring the whole thing full-circle. The second movement, “Romanze,” has a wonderful ethereal quality to it; and I actually would have liked Maestro Lenigher to luxuriate in this a bit more, and induce a sumptuous, less raw sound out of the strings. But, in general, despite the impression that Maestro Leningher fancied himself a sort of ringleader with a whip, coaxing focused playing out of the orchestra by sheer violence of gesture. The sound produced, however, though certainly not from an orchestra as much at ease as it would have liked, was forceful, and full, but never plodding. I just hoped they all survived the blows.
Sunday’s concert, led by Spanish conductor and BBC philharmonic director Juanjo Mena began with the seemingly bizarre choice of Haydn’s Symphony No.6 in D called “Le Matin” (that is No. 6 out of 104), first presented in 1761. Although I must say it is always a joy to hear Haydn played by top orchestras, which is all too rare an occasion, probably because orchestras are overly eager to use as many as all the brassy toys as possible. But, I certainly would not have thought of Haydn Symphony no.6! Still, the first movement sounds like classic late 18th century Haydn: A slow introduction builds out of barely audible murmurings in the strings, and develops languidly, but sumptuously, to the full richness of Haydn’s usual scoring for strings. Even in 1761 we can hear a genius at work. The following movements, however, resort to a very baroque sort of concerto grosso format, made still less impressive by the rather ineffectual solo turns by the usually excellent BSO principles. None of these movements have the delightful richness of the first; yet, happily for us, the first, and not the latter movements, wasa sign of things come.
Maestro Mena then led a focused and incisive, if not particularly strong sounding accompaniment, of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 in D, K.218. However, the solo contribution, provided by Augustin Hadelich, was embarrassingly second-second for this level of venue. Now, before my readers begin to cry foul at my third negative review of a violin soloist this summer, and call me snobbish and uncompromising with regard to violinists, I should like to point out that there are a great many solo violinists on the world stage of whom I think very highly indeed. Instead of Anne Sophie Mutter, Joshua Bell, and Augustin Hadelich, listed in descending order of quality, I would have tried to book Lisa Batiasvilli, Vadim Repin, and Hilary Haun, the latter being probably the greatest violinist in the world today.
Suffice it to say, in regard to Hadelich performance’s, that his sound was scrappy, and un-sonorous; and he seemed almost to be choking the sound before it left the violin, instead of drawing it out lovingly for all the world to hear. Hadelich’s projection is about as poor as Joshua Bell’s, but he hasn’t the Romantic sensibility which, in the case of Bell, does sometimes produce some very fine phrasing. Hadelich also had the gall to play an encore, a habit of his, no matter what the level of applause, which was the Paganini Caprice No.9, which is supposed to be a showcase of astonishing virtuosity, of which Hadelich has none. I honestly felt I was sitting in a violin recital at a local music school listening to a talented, diligent, but ultimately unpromising young student with large ambitions. Thankfully for us, Mr. Hadelich did play all the notes of the Mozart concerto, and so we could still delight, to some extent, in this exquisite early masterpiece of a budding genius of already considerable power.
Concluding an entire program of works in D major was Beethoven’s Symphony No.2, realized by a reduced, but full, if not particularly warm sounding BSO string section. The thematic material, and the first theme of the opening movement, in particular, is more classical, and tightly woven in style, but of course even a relatively young Beethoven takes us on one of his trademark romps in the transition to the second theme; and the development is fraught with a fire and zeal enhanced by Mena’s tranchant phrasing. The lovely thematic material of the second movement “larghetto” actually has hints of unusually Romantic sensibility, not often found in even late Beethoven. As good as Mena’s interpretation of the “larghetto,” the third movement scherzo sounded a bit squeezed, especially compared to the delicate expansiveness of the previous movement, which Mena had brought out to great effect. In the allegro molto, however, the orchestra got a bit more back into the spirit of Beethoven’s jesting rambunctiousness, which closes out the symphony, so as to leave us all in good humor.
