Tanglewood forges ahead without Levine
LENOX - Tanglewood suffered from a kind of collective whiplash last week, as the high spirits left by the season-opening performances of Berlioz's "Trojans" were summarily doused by the news of music director James Levine's sudden withdrawal from the remainder of the summer. This week, he is scheduled to undergo surgery for the removal of a kidney due to a cyst "causing pressure and discomfort," according to an orchestra statement.
As observers speculated on the nature of Levine's ailment and what it all meant, the administrative machinery kicked into high gear, and within a few short days, replacements were found for almost all of Levine's scheduled concerts. The orchestra will bring in Leonard Slatkin and David Zinman to conduct programs that Levine was scheduled to lead, and the BSO will also lean more heavily on its assistant conductors Shi-Yeon Sung and Julian Kuerti, who was tapped for action this past weekend.
Meanwhile, the steady hand of Bernard Haitink presiding over the orchestra's concerts on Friday and Saturday night helped stave off any sense of a massive ship adrift without a captain. Haitink's appearances had been on the summer schedule from the outset, yet the timing of his arrival could not have been better. He has after all been conducting the BSO for more than 35 years and has long earned the trust of both the musicians and the local audience through his artistic integrity and unshowy musicianship. Those qualities were again in evidence over the weekend.
Tellingly, at the end of Friday's all-Beethoven program, Haitink motioned for the musicians to stand and join him in acknowledging applause, but in a statement of collective respect, the players sat firmly planted in their seats, insisting that the bow be Haitink's alone.
The Friday program had featured an eloquent reading of Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony: warmly shaded, musically well-grounded, expressively unfussy yet nuanced. Haitink's seating of both the first and second violin sections in a single group to his left - as opposed to splitting them as Levine does - brought a different weighting to the orchestra's sound but hardly affected its overall clarity. On the first half, three young rising stars - pianist Jonathan Biss, violinist Julia Fischer, and cellist Daniel Müller-Schott - were the soloists in Beethoven's Triple Concerto. The reading was respectable and boasted some supple and elegant playing from Biss, but curious tempo choices in the second and third movements as well as a slightly imbalanced group chemistry prevented this performance from really catching fire. The three will have another shot at making a group impression commensurate with their individual reputations Wednesday night in a chamber music performance at Ozawa Hall.
On Saturday evening, Haitink was back to lead the orchestra, vocal soloists Heidi Grant Murphy and Christianne Stotijn, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in a forceful, penetrating performance of Mahler's Second Symphony. Here the playing was far from note perfect yet Haitink managed to fuse Mahler's teeming movements into coherent, focused narratives of sustained intensity. Stotijn's singing stood out for the expressive warmth and sensitivity she brought to Mahler's sublime "Urlicht." The chorus, sounding at its most robust, provided the necessary heat and light at the work's conclusion.
On Sunday afternoon, Kuerti stepped in for Levine in a program that included two works - Haydn's Symphony No. 104 and Schubert's "Tragic" Symphony - plucked from this year's Symphony Hall season. The young conductor held his own and, given the circumstances, did an admirable job with both works. The Haydn had some stiff-jointed moments and would have benefited from a lighter touch at times, but by the finale of the Schubert, the orchestra was playing with all the requisite vigor and grace.
In between, pianist Peter Serkin offered a reconstructed version of Bach's Concerto in D minor (BWV 1052), its middle movement sounding rather dissociated and strange in Serkin's hands. The youthful brio of Mozart's Concert Rondo (K. 382) seemed to ground both orchestra and soloist.
Overall, the place where Levine's absence will be most keenly felt this summer is surely the Tanglewood Music Center, where he typically works very closely with the young conductors, singers, and instrumentalists in the preparation of a full opera performed in concert (this year it's Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin," scheduled for Aug. 2). This breed of close contact is not easily replicated.
And then there is, of course, the all-Elliott Carter Festival of Contemporary Music, beginning on Sunday. Levine may be the world's most tireless Carter advocate, and it is still hard to fathom that he will miss this event completely. No fewer than six conductors and one pianist are being tapped to replace him on the various programs. Tellingly, the "Eugene Onegin" performance is the one date for which no replacement conductor has been announced.
