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A Musical Summer in the Berkshires Continues

Sound and Fury

By: - Aug 11, 2006

A Musical Summer in the Berkshires Continues - Image 1 A Musical Summer in the Berkshires Continues
    As "Berkshire Fine Arts" tools up for the launch of its new site, some of the most extraordinary musical experiences of the summer are receding into the past. However, given the dedication of BSO patrons, some won't be forgotten for a long time. I mean especially James Levine's celebration of Mozart's 250th birthday at Tanglewood, which included "Don Giovanni," his final symphony, and his final work, the Requiem, which was left incomplete at his death. This might well have been the culmination of my last cluster of reviews, "Swan Songs," since the "Requiem" must surely be the ultimate swan song in the classical repertoire, with its elegiac contemplation of death and the eery story of the mysterious visitor who arrived unannounced at Mozart's door to commission the work, and whom the ailing thirty-five-year-old composer took as a harbinger of his imminent demise. Maestro Levine assembled an only slightly reduced orchestra and an expanded Tanglewood Festival Chorus for a broad, monumental reading distinguished by singing lines, textural clarity, and alert ensemble.

    "Don Giovanni" was surely one of the events of the season with its world-class soloists, splendid playing by the BSO, and Maestro Levine's deeply familiarity and love for the score. In his performances at the Met he has shown traces of his extensive experience in Vienna. Here the BSO sounded like nothing but its lithe and brilliant self—its new self, that is. There was an interplay between the orchestra, above all the woodwinds and the singers, which one rarely hears outside small opera houses. Likewise, particularly in the second act, the performance caught fire" It was the sort of vivid performance one might expect to hear at Glyndebourne rather than in the vast Music Shed at Tanglewood. And all this was topped with the triumphant success of a young singer brought in at the last moment to replace the indisposed Ferruccio Furlanetto as Leporello, Luca Pisaroni, who in fact is hardly a discovery, since he has sung principle roles in most of major houses including the Metropolitan Opera under Maestro Levine. The Tanglewood audience enjoyed it immensely, perhaps inordinately amused by the supertitles, which sometimes preceded the actual delivery of the lines and created the effect of an unusually insistent laugh track. We are constantly reading agonized discussions of programming issues in classical music, and efforts to keep the seats filled with younger listeners. Concert performances of opera are hardly new, but events like this one clearly had a broad appeal. As they filed out of the Koussevitzky Music Shed, the audience seemed eager to come back for more.

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