Russian program opens 65th Shed season

July 5, 2003 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Kurt Masur

To open its 65th season in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood on July 5, 2003, the Boston Symphony Orchestra chose a program of Russian music, Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, Cantata, and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, conducted by Kurt Masur, music director of the Orchestre National de France, who gave his final concert as music director of the New York Philharmonic in the Shed last July.

Even though the weather was more Mississippi Deltan than Russian, Masur elicited a performance that thrilled the audience, which responded with an especially strong ovation for Alexander Nevsky, sung brilliantly (and from memory) by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver conductor, and mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves who sang the solo part.

Sergei Prokofiev's composition was written for Sergei Einstein's 1938 movie, which itself was "commissioned" by Stalin's propaganda department to raise the morale of Russians in the face of the rising menace of Hitler's Germany. Despite the political horrors behind its commissioning, this "movie music" also is great music, and it stands in stark contrast to the contemporary movie music frequently heard here that is commissioned by Hollywood to raise the morale of people who like Happy Meals.

Mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves

The composition closing the program, Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, was made famous by Koussevitsky, who gave its premiere in Paris in 1922 in its Maurice Ravel orchestration, but was performed tonight in the Sergei Gorchakov orchestration, which Maestro Masur gave the American premiere of in 1982.

Masur has stressed the distinction between the "Western European elegance" of Ravel's sound and the more "primal and Russian" of Gorchakov's, according to Michael Steinberg's program notes. We found the performance to be perfectly delightful and captivating, our mind wandering only for a moment about 2/3rds in (when we started thinking about where to see Bob Dylan this summer) to be snapped back to attention by the beckoning of the wind section's stirring variation on the familiar opening theme. It was good to be alert for the orchestra's resolution of this fascinating tour of emotions, and to enjoy Masur's muscular conducting, and to witness the affection he and the BSO have for each other.

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