The arrival of Grant Llewellyn last year as music director of the Handel & Haydn Society was more than a breath of fresh air. He rescued Bostons oldest musical institution from the Early Music pieties and orthodoxies and the musical ineffectuality of superstar director Christopher Hogwood. Llewellyns first program was Haydns oratorio The Creation, and it demonstrated the conductors best qualities: clarity and precision; excellent pacing, with thoughtful but lively tempos, a sense of the works overall architecture; nuance, a sensitivity to the meaning of each passing moment; and above all an unaggressive, genuine charm and naturalness. Most of these qualities are valuable for any piece of music. But some are not and this seasons opener, Bachs overwhelming B-minor Mass, is a work that requires a grandeur and depth of feeling Llewellyn evidently doesnt always (or yet) possess.
Before the Early Music hegemony, the B-minor used to be performed with huge forces choruses with hundreds of singers and large orchestras, and with unrelenting solemnity. Now most performances use historical instruments and small choruses. Joshua Rifkins notorious version had a chorus of eight; Llewellyns numbered 28. In Symphony Hall they always sounded quiet, held back, a little pale even in the more celebratory and boisterous passages. You could hear Bachs jaunty counterpoint immaculately, but there was little rhythmic variety. Endless bounce made the entire Mass feel endless. The essential passion seemed missing. The magnificent "Sanctus" lacked gravity (isnt it possible to have gravity without weightiness?). I imagined Llewellyn saying to the ensemble, "Isnt the B-minor fun?" This work ends with a plea to the Lamb of God to grant us peace. But if everything seems peaceful, uneventful, unconflicted (this High Mass sounded more like a series of Christmas carols), theres hardly much point in praying for peace at the end.
There were good singers and players. The obbligato soloists were stellar: Daniel Stepner on Baroque violin, Christopher Krueger on Baroque flute (does anyone have a warmer flute sound?), oboist Stephen Hammer. Unfortunately Richard Menauls cornu da caccia (an unvalved "hunting" horn) sounded as if it had fallen into a muddy pond during a foxhunt; this chronically recalcitrant instrument gargled more than it rang out, spoiling one of the best vocal solos, bass Sanford Sylvans "Quoniam." With the horn gone, Sylvans supple, creamy, multi-hued singing, perfect diction, and depth of understanding in "Et in Spiritum Sanctum" (who but Bach could make the canonical "Et unam sanctam catholicam et apistolicam ecclesiam" sound so heavenly?) was one high point. He and soprano Dominique Labelle (the irresistible Eve in last years Creation) were the most expressive singers. Young tenor Jeffrey Thompson was in fine voice too, especially in the "Benedictus." His more than occasional swaying and self-conscious manner made his singing look woozy. In their duet, I didnt think his tightly focused tone blended well with Labelles greater warmth.
Soprano Madeline Bender sang the part usually sung by altos. Her voice was very pretty at the top, but she had to do most of her singing from its least attractive part. Every now and then shed look up and smile, then she shifted back to neutral. One of the audience favorites was countertenor Daniel Taylor, who has maybe the biggest and richest high male voice Ive ever heard. But his crucial "Agnus Dei" at the end seemed abstract and unexpressive: impressive in sound, but where was the soul?
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, Benjamin Zander led the Cecilia Society (now Boston Cecilia) and a group of phenomenal soloists in what remains for me the most persuasive and thrilling live performance of the B-minor Mass unorthodox, perhaps even unstylish, but shattering. Ill never forget it. In recent years, a number of Zanders performances with the Boston Philharmonic have seemed dominated driven by ideas, willed more than "experienced." Intelligence and thoughtfulness are rare enough in conductors. But Zander at his very best gives music a palpable feeling of being "lived through," and when its not there, its missed though theres always plenty to admire. His season-opening concert with the Philharmonic overflowed with it.
Id mentioned to a friend a few days before this concert that I was not looking forward to yet another performance of the Dvork Cello Concerto. I hadnt loved Zanders version with Colin Carr a few years ago, and, frankly, Im tired of all the rhetoric and sentimentality. Word of my lack of enthusiasm spread. Saturday morning, another friend, who had heard the Sanders Theatre performance the previous Thursday, called to urge me not to miss it. "Youve never heard anything like it."
He was right at Jordan Hall that night, Zander was in his best old form, with what must be the best orchestral team hes ever had, and with one of his favorite soloists, Scottish cellist Alexander Baillie. Together, they brought the Dvork to stunning life. A friend across the aisle thought the playing was so spontaneous and natural it sounded like improvisation. Every player seemed to be listening to responding to everyone else. The opening bars for winds, paced with exquisite sensitivity, were as intimate as chamber music, and Zander kept the lid on until the powerful outbursts blew it off.
We were off on great personal adventure, and the hero was, of course, the cello. After bringing a galloping energy to the first theme, with his freedom and variety of attack and tone, Baillie let his cello dissolve into the melting second theme (introduced so beautifully earlier by Neil Dalands horn), which he later brought back as a mysterious lament sung against a background of quietly simmering strings and solo flute (Kathleen Boyd, in her finest contribution to the BPO).
In the second movement, Adagio non troppo, we were back in the world of chamber music, which everyone was playing with heartbreaking tenderness. Baillie gave the cellos filigree a sense of purpose (or different purposes) a suggestion of searching, or waiting in suspense to see what was going to happen, or contemplating what had happened. Again, this was an unfolding of events, not just a moving from one musical section to the next. And even the intimacy had size, import, a large-heartedness.
The last movement began with a stealthy tread, then expanded, took off. The hero seemed more determined than ever to conquer his grief (Dvorks beloved sister-in-law was dying during the time he was writing the concerto, his last piece composed in America; he even rewrote the last part of the last movement after she died). His adventure included the capacity to dance. But the contemplativeness was less about a tentative future than about an all-engulfing past an aching nostalgia for something irretrievable that was preventing him from moving forward (like Frosts snowy woods, or Becketts "I cant go on"/"Thats what you think"). And when he was finally capable of moving ahead, that was a real achievement a glorious victory over the past that seemed completely earned.
Zander ended the extended ovation by ushering Baillie back for an encore, the profoundly inward Sarabande from Bachs C-major Suite for Unaccompanied Cello.
No less remarkable was the opening Overture to Mozarts Le nozze di Figaro a piece usually tossed off with brilliant bustle. Zanders approach was fuller and infinitely richer, actually contending with the issues of Mozarts great opera: the power of love and the pomp of power and the way nasty backbiting (embodied in witty little high-pitched "grace" notes) can trigger volcanic eruptions. Not a bar of music went by without thought or implication.
The evening ended with an exciting, vivid performance of Schuberts Great C-major Symphony (my evening it was without the major repeats). I actually prefer the more spacious approach to tempos and the textural variety of a Furtwngler or a Klemperer (who also eliminated the repeats) with their sense of cosmic mystery, their suggestion of a revolving, spiraling universe, an all-embracing dance to Zanders Toscanini-like single-minded consistency of tempo, a forward rather than circular motion that sounds rather more like Beethoven than Schubert (Zander made the allusion to Beethovens "Ode to Joy" in the Finale more audible than usual). But what joys in Peggy Pearsons Pied Piper oboe leading the grunting basses in the Andante con moto funeral march, in Thomas Hills singing clarinet, in the glorious horn section that should be the envy of every orchestra in town, and in the continuous glow of the strings.
NEXT DAY I was slightly let down listening to another Schubert masterpiece. The FleetBoston Celebrity series was bringing the magnificent Belgian bass baritone Jos van Dam to intimate Jordan Hall to sing Schuberts Winterreise ("Winter Journey"), surely the most profoundly moving song cycle ever written and Schuberts own favorite among his song output. This was only Van Dams second Boston recital his first was five years ago, with the same accompanist, the skillful young Polish pianist Maciej Pikulski. That was a memorable event, but some of the same problems persisted: a persistent dryness in Van Dams voice, some forcing when Pikulski didnt keep down his volume level.
The speaker in Wilhelm Mllers 24 poems is a lonely wanderer whose young lady has left him for a rich fianc. Schuberts music expands the boundaries of the poems, taking their proto-Symboliste images (three suns, crows circling overhead, an inn that is really a cemetery) and making the entire cycle an exploration of existential isolation especially the isolation of the artist. Van Dams was, at times, the bitterest, angriest Winterreise Ive heard (compared with the overwhelming sense of tragedy mezzo-soprano Mitsuko Shirai and pianist Hartmut Hll gave it in their devastating 1998 Houghton Library concert). His rage broke through a faade of stoicism but then the stoicism returned. Too many of the songs sounded the same.
Van Dam also held back on tempo, and the plodding pace of too many songs exchanged inner drama for inner meditation a quality more static than moving (in every sense of the word). Only rarely did he allow us to see a deeper sorrow, as in "The Weathervane":
Within, the wind plays with hearts,
As it does on the roof, but not so loud.
Van Dams "not so loud" was a wail of agony.
His most beautiful singing came in the very last song, "Der Leiermann" the old organ grinder, staggering barefoot on the ice, surrounded by snarling dogs, playing music only he himself hears. The poet begs this solitary but unbroken figure to accompany the songs of his desolate journey. To transform Life into Art. Van Dams voice suddenly began to float free, to resonate, to sing. And here the deliberate pace was, at last, heartbreaking.
Blowing the lid off