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The Boston Globe, September 29, 2014 |
By Jeremy Eichler |
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Konzert, Boston, 27. September 2014 |
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At Symphony Hall with Andris Nelsons, a new chapter for BSO
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It had been a full 3½ years since the Boston Symphony Orchestra last
performed with a music director of its own. Finally, as of Saturday night,
it has a new one.
Before a packed and expectant Symphony Hall, the
35-year-old Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons, looking humbled yet poised,
stepped onto the podium of the BSO and gave the downbeat as its 15th music
director, the youngest in over a century, and only the second in its history
(after Serge Koussevitzky) to come of age under the cultural influence of
Russia.
The crowd’s enthusiasm seemed, to put it mildly, in no way
dampened by the wait. Television cameras from PBS swooped on long booms.
Music critics from national media outlets came to Boston for the night. The
Nelsons love spilled onto the Twittersphere, and WCRB’s live Internet stream
of the performance was heard in Europe, where the conductor has until now
built his career. Indeed his tenure at the BSO has just begun, but he
already has the ears of the music world far beyond Boston. What will he be
giving us to hear?
On Saturday night, the answer was a festive gala
program made up of operatic excerpts, with two topflight singers, tenor
Jonas Kaufmann and soprano Kristine Opolais (Nelsons’s wife), lending their
own star wattage to the occasion.
As a program-builder, Nelsons seems
to fall into the impressionistic school, choosing clusters of works not with
the goal per se of summoning larger themes, ideas, or stories but because
they strike him as simply working well together. In this case, the night
opened with the overture to Wagner’s “Tannhaüser,” continued with opera
excerpts from Wagner, Mascagni, and Puccini, and was capped by Respighi’s
gaudily spectacular orchestral showpiece, the “Pines of Rome.”
On
this occasion, Nelsons’s “Tannhäuser” was spacious in its sound world, if at
times slightly static in its pacing. Winds and brasses for long stretches
emitted a kind of lidded glow. For his part, Kaufmann was in superb voice,
beginning with “In Fernem Land” from Act III of Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” surely
the most entrancing six minutes of the evening. He floated the opening pages
as one part reverie, one part incantation, with Nelsons spinning silken
threads of orchestral sound around his distant tenor. Wagner’s music through
this passage builds in firmness and weight as it approaches the revelation
of Lohengrin’s secret, and then recedes again toward immateriality. Before a
shout of “Bravo!” interrupted, Nelsons had cast a deep spell, the final
seconds of music drifting off as if into the clear night sky.
After
intermission, Kaufmann returned with a heated and shapely account of “Mamma,
Quel Vino è Generoso” from Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana.” The Prelude
and Liebestod from “Tristan und Isolde” came between the two. This was a
young man’s “Tristan” Prelude, light on the weltschmerz but still paced at
an effective slow-burn. The “Liebestod” was a curious choice for Opolais’s
lighter voice, and while attractive colors came through, the work did not
play to her formidable strengths. Nelsons also deployed a lot of energy on
the podium trying to keep the orchestra’s sound from swamping the vocal
line.
Opolais fared better in a deeply felt account of “Un bel dì”
from “Madama Butterfly,” delivering a glimpse of one of her signature roles
that made you wish to hear more. She also teamed up with Kaufmann for “Tu,
tu Amore? Tu?” from Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut,” and the pair showed real
chemistry, even in a concert performance. The two capped their section of
the program with a tenderly sung encore, “O Soave Fanciulla” from “La
Bohème.”
That left Nelsons alone on the podium to bring the night
home by means of Respighi’s potboiler, which he did with a richly
atmospheric account, full of subtle details in its scene painting. In the
moonlit Janiculum movement, William Hudgins’s clarinet solos lent a
transporting glow. Respighi of course gives the brass the final triumphant
word, and at Saturday’s close Nelsons did not stint on decibels, with
trumpet players fanning the orchestral blaze from the balconies.
So
what now? How about a bit of context. The best conductors continue deepening
their craft into their 70s or even 80s. At 35, Nelsons will not try to play
the guru, going to the mountain and bringing back the tablets of Mahler. His
most important gift at this point may be his ability to serve as a catalyst,
to inspire freshly energetic playing from an orchestra, and to convey a
sense that a performance is not another event on a high-culture assembly
line but rather an act of spontaneous creation capable of delivering the
jolt of the real.
Nelsons’s youth, his immersive podium style, and
his fundamental openness will help the orchestra reach new audiences. Yet
for this new era to reach its full potential, he will also need to add to
this mix a boldness of artistic and institutional vision commensurate with
his willingness to take risks onstage.
Saturday’s opener already
shows that he begins here with an enormous reservoir of good will, most
crucially from the players themselves. All parties should think big. Nelsons
— in demand throughout Europe — should embrace this new chapter of his
career, pare back his dizzying schedule, establish a home in the city, and
prioritize this great orchestra. If he can do all of that, it is quite
clear: The future of this partnership should be very bright indeed.
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