A symphonic rainbow under the night sky
Boston Common was full of arts activity Friday night when the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company and the Boston Landmarks Orchestra were simultaneously performing "Much Ado About Nothing" and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Beethoven won by a landslide -- a park official guessed that the crowd for the Ninth was somewhere around 2,000 people, maybe more.
Boston Landmarks Orchestra
Charles Ansbacher, conductor
At: Boston Common, Friday night
The Ninth of course always draws crowds; it is one of the most famous artifacts of Western culture, and it bears a message important to humanity -- although, to some people Friday night, not more important than their banal cellphone conversations. Landmarks Orchestra founder and conductor Charles Ansbacher spoke of that message, pointing out that Beethoven had incorporated a Turkish march into the finale that praises the universal brotherhood of man.
In Beethoven's Vienna, he said, Turks were viewed pretty much the way terrorists are viewed in America today. The performance of the symphony and of the overture, "Consecration of the House," delivered the message through all of the usual advantages and disadvantages of outdoor performance. There was noise from traffic on Charles Street, especially from motorcycles; airplanes soared and growled overhead.
Sound design has become an art, but you wouldn't know it from the Landmarks Orchestra's underpowered sound system, which failed to deliver much of anything to the perimeter of the audience and offered poor balance and harsh tone to that part of the public within its range. The handful of listeners who chose to sit off to the side of the stage, or behind the speakers, received an unbalanced perspective, too, but at least the sound was natural.
The orchestra of 50 was small for today's expectations for the Ninth, but it was full of first-rate local freelancers, and the chorus of 150 represented 30 different New England groups, especially the Spectrum Singers, the Back Bay Chorale, and the Providence Singers. The chorus was expertly prepared by John W. Ehrlich, and the singers sounded secure in even the most demanding passages. The solo quartet featured prominent singers based in New England.
Bass Z. Edmund Toliver sang fervently, but with a rough tone that was not favored by the microphone. Soprano Ellen Chickering needs amplification less than most and retains her easy, pealing top tones. No mike can help the poor alto, left by Beethoven in a range in which no one can project; other evidence suggests that Mary Westbrook sang well. Tenor Yeghishe Manucharyan, in that Turkish march, came off sounding the best of all. Ansbacher conducts with energy, idealism, and emotion that carries him across some rough spots, and the players gave their all for him.
The advantages of free outdoor performances are also important. The audience was younger and more diverse than you would ever see at a subscription concert in Symphony Hall. There were many couples with small children, gay couples, African-Americans, Asians, and other representatives of the rainbow of humanity, most of them listening attentively; bicyclists drawn in by the music stopped to listen. Children played in the illuminated 1979 sculpture by Andrzej Pitynski, "Partisans," and Beethoven's vision seemed, for a brief moment, a living reality.
