BSO newcomer gets help from an old hand
LENOX - Edouard Lalo's Cello Concerto in D minor is fairly pedestrian music. It's a series of rhapsodic melodies for the cello knitted together by blustery injections from the orchestra. Despite its popularity with cellists, it is not a particularly exalted piece.
Listening to Yo-Yo Ma play it on Sunday at Tanglewood, though, you could have sworn that there was no more engaging, riveting music in existence. Ma is a musician for whom routine is impossible, and one of his gifts is an uncanny ability to imbue anything he plays with a sense of total conviction and artistic value. Whether he was declaiming one of Lalo's impassioned solos, thumping out a rhythmic ostinato, or letting a note hang suspended in the air, he drew listeners into the equation in a way few musicians can manage.
Ma is, of course, a Tanglewood veteran. On Sunday he was sharing the stage with a newcomer: Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto, who was making his first Boston Symphony Orchestra appearance, and offered the cellist strong and flexible support. Share they certainly did: As the pair was preparing to return to the stage, each could be seen trying to get the other out first to accept the frenzied applause. ("Come on, you first!" "No, you first!")
The Lalo was the middle course of Prieto's promising debut. He led off with four selections from "Iberia," Isaac Albéniz's collection of piano pieces, in sumptuous arrangements by violinist and conductor Enrique Fernandez Arbós. The orchestrations clothed Albéniz's smoldering rhythms in layers of exotic color. Robert Sheena made the most of their exquisite English horn solos.
After intermission came Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, a three-movement work that is shorter and looser in construction than the composer's symphonies, yet shares their serious demeanor. Prieto led it with a clear, strong beat and tightly controlled gestures, though he also gave the music breathing space when needed.
Still, the dance aspect of the music was sometimes lost, especially in the second movement, whose waltz rhythms lacked an essential, lilting quality. More successful was the lengthy finale, which veers between propulsive energy and lyrical song. Prieto guided the orchestra with a steady sense of its winding architecture, and brought it to an exciting close.
The orchestra played well for him, especially in the Rachmaninoff. The brass were especially impressive, as they had ample opportunity to show off their skills.
