when is a cliche apt?

August 14, 2005 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

With the combination of flute and harp on tap, can the word 'heavenly' be far behind? Add to the mix Mozart, James Galway, Ann Hobson Pilot, and August afternoon at Tanglewood, and it's a sure thing, especially so now that weather has been called into play. The role the latter played this time was significant, but of what, in particular, is open to speculation.

The facts are that thunderstorms were forecast for the afternoon, several thousand lawnsters came to the concert anyway (attendance was nearly 9,000), and the rain didn't reach Tanglewood until the music was over. Our interpretation is that, whether or not the program and musicians were being favored, the audience was rewarded for taking the risk of getting soaked.

The all-Mozart program opened with a reduced contingent of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis, playing the Overture to The Impresario, and it closed with them playing the Symphony No.38, Prague. In between was the Concerto in C for Flute and Harp with soloists Sir James Galway, the man with the golden flute, and Ann Hobson Pilot, B.S.O. principal harpist.

They might as well have been sporting halos as their playing had the miraculous effect of stripping the air of its oppressiveness and wringing it dry. As it was, Ms. Pilot looked beautiful, wearing a diaphanous mauve chemise and white pants, while Mr. Galway was casually elegant - and defiant, with a bright red ascot and striped waistcoat under a pastel dinner jacket.

The Concerto in C for Flute and Harp was written in Paris in 1778, when Mozart was 22, for an aristocrat who stiffed the composer on his fee. (Wonder if the fat cat would eventually provide entertainment for Madame Defarge?) With such a provenance, the concerto being free of any grand associations, composed for the most ordinary of reasons, it's remarkable how affecting it can be.

Ms. Pilot and Mr. Galway seemed anything but an ad hoc pairing, so beautifully did sound together. Ms. Pilot made her solo B.S.O. debut with this piece and Mr. Galway has recorded it. One just couldn't keep from envisioning cloud-perched angels and fluttering songbirds as they played. But there was nothing trite about the performance; it was one that should be called heavenly, because once in a great while, the cliche is apt.

Whether on not it was because they were afraid the gig would go "ppd. rain," there were audience members who applauded today at the end of every movement; and there was a sizeable gaggle of faithless auditors who streamed out of the shed at the start of the Prague's final movement. The faithful were rewarded with the concert's most exciting music, notwithstanding the Concerto with bravura performances from the soloists being the program's high point.

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