"...a performance brilliant in toto"

Oct. 14, 2006 performance reviewed by Karl Henning.

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Lynn Harrell, violoncello
Ludovic Morlot, conducting
Vaughan Williams, Fantasia on a Tallis Hymn
Shostakovich, Cello Concerto No. 1, Opus 107
Prokofiev, Romeo & Juliet (selections)

In the program notes, there was mention of the oddity of having a brief English 'opener' for an otherwise all-Russian program. But all three pieces were written in the 20th century (and if the Vaughan Williams is a modern musical reflection upon an Elizabethan source, why, so is Prokofiev's ballet). And all three composers found highly personal means of engaging the musical past; by "personal" I mean both that it were impossible to boil the three composers' oeuvres down into anything like a common "formula," and that each composer found inspiration in the artistic past, while nonetheless finding his own voice.

The BSO strings sounded magnificent here, and especially in the Tallis Fantasia, a piece which (let us be frank) can suffer from radio-saturation. Yet ironically it is only in the performance space that one can experience the varying depths of hearing, of the string choir tutti, contrasted to the chamber nonet, in turn contrasted to the solo quartet. These several musical forces project into and fill the space in different ways, and the sort of "musical comfort" factor of the Fantasia can blind us to the ingenuity of Vaughan Williams's scoring. Recordings are inarguably a great benefit (I must know a thousand pieces of music via recording, a great many of which I will never have any opportunity to hear in live performance); but it is worth remembering that actual attendance at a concert is as different from even the best recording, as meeting someone is different from viewing a photograph.

Harrell was superb in the by turns fiery and icy Shostakovich Concerto, and the BSO accompanied brilliantly, in a piece whose mercurial turns of meter would invite many a lesser ensemble to a series of trainwrecks. Shostakovich's overall oeuvre is a marvel: he never wrote the same piece twice, and yet he would frequently use material in one piece which clearly echoes another. Thus the first movement of the First Cello Concerto has one theme which looks back to the Scherzo of the Tenth Symphony, and another theme, to which in turn the opening of the much later Fifteenth Symphony will seem to harken back. Even in the use of a single horn as the sole brasswind in a cello concerto, is a modification of obbligato trumpet which whips up a galop in the First Piano Concerto – but, of course, the two concerti occupy entirely different affects. The First Cello Concerto's middle movements are an earnest, brooding core, not to be slighted, but the relative cheer of the outer movements seems marginally to command the listener's overall impression; especially as the recurring march is restored to its original character at the end.

To hear such gratefully extensive excerpts from Prokofiev's stage masterpiece, Romeo & Juliet, and played so well, so feelingly, is necessarily to wish that we might have heard the ballet in its entirety. It is a score with not a single superfluous note, not the hint of overstaying its welcome, for in it Prokofiev wondrously combines Tchaikovsky and Shakespeare: the Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet manages to fuse fairy-tale with high tragedy. It is a mysterious power of music, which is possibly forever foreign to spoken drama.

Ludovic Morlot led a performance brilliant in toto. Last season when James Levine suffered his injury, Morlot had to stand in on short notice. On that occasion, Morlot made fine work of the Schoenberg First Chamber Symphony; and if the performance of the Beethoven Ninth seemed not to match the excellence of the Schoenberg, it is a monument well-known to everyone who has seen the gilt name "Beethoven" hanging over the Symphony Hall stage. It is the musical equivalent of an actor playing Hamlet, who sees half the audience in front of him mouthing the words "To be or not to be" along with him. On this occasion, however, with the Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, Morlot entirely vindicated himself, and earned unalloyed praise.