bright, brisk Beethoven's Ninth

August 28, 2005 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Guest conductor Marek Janowski brought the curtain down on the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Tanglewood season with a bright, brisk performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. that took up a mere 63 minutes, several fewer than is usual.

Since 1997, Beethoven's Ninth has been the summer finale at Tanglewood, conducted by a succession of guests, including Mstislav Rostropovich whose 1998 rendition lasted some thirty minutes longer than Janowski's. But next year BSO music director James Levine will conduct it in the season's opening concert on July 7, 2006.

John Oliver conducted the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, who were magnificent to the point of overshadowing the soloists, which isn't to say that they (soprano Hillevi Martinpelto, mezzo Susan Platts, bass Alastair Miles, tenor Kurt Streit) were anything but first-rate.

It's just that this assembly of 250 amateurs produces such a mighty sound and today made of Schiller's Ode to Joy a panacea that left everyone within earshot feeling better than they had been an hour earlier.

Too bad rainy weather limited the the size of the audience, just as it had the season's opening performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 seven weeks ago.

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