Memories of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 10-5-24. A surprising disappointment

Ricochetti with more time than judgment will recall that since October 2019, I have made a hobby of posting classical orchestra music reviews here. This was originally an attempt to train my critical ear for the Mahler Festival, to be held at Amsterdam’s fabled Concertgebouw in May 2020. Just imagine what it would have been! “Ten symphonies played by six orchestras, four of them among the world’s finest. The New York Phil, Royal Concertgebouw, Berlin Phil and Vienna Phil on successive nights. What a show!”

https://ricochet.com/735129/memories-of-the-amsterdam-mahler-festival-may-2020/

Well, you know what happened to that festival. It happened also to the rescheduled 2021 Amsterdam Mahler Festival. In 2023 Leipzig picked up the ball and held a Mahler Festival on similar lines in their Gewandhaus, but my sudden illness kept us from attending. I had to swallow the cost of ten nights’ tickets but was able to trade the airline reservation in for something else. All of this disappointment stopped me from doing concert reviews, otherwise, you lucky people would have read about some spectacular concerts Mrs. Doc Robert and I have heard at Tanglewood these last three summers.

The good Dutchmen, being a persistent people, have scheduled a 2025 Amsterdam Mahler Festival, and, by gum, we will be attending. Thus, I am back to writing about concerts to sharpen my listening ear.

Ten nights in a foreign city with concerts every night is a little daunting, so we agreed to take off one night for a quiet meal out. Toward that end we wanted to hear several Mahler symphonies here in the States before the Festival. We can then skip the one that we find least impressive. I heard the 2^nd in New York in June, done by the Philharmonic (very impressive, can’t wait to hear it again!); we heard the 4^th done by the Boston Symphony (BSO) at Tanglewood in July (ditto); and we will hear the 6^th in New York in April done by the Philly O at Carnegie Hall.

On October 5 we drove into Boston to hear the BSO play the most rarely heard of the Mahler corpus, his Symphony 8, called the “Symphony of a Thousand” for the large forces it requires. Neither Mrs. Doc nor I had ever heard the Eighth before, except maybe on CD (I have Vienna Philharmonic under Maazel, but have not heard it in at least 25 years, if ever). When we saw the BSO had programmed it, we deliberately did not seek out a YouTube performance so we could experience it "in the raw flesh," as it were. We did the same thing when we first heard the Verdi Requiem in 2014 and found the live performance to be an overwhelming experience.

It was a difficult night. The drive from Springfield, MA was troublesome—the Mass Pike being more congested than usual (a BSO musician once told me that any member would forgive you for being late if you roll your eyes and say “Mass Pike”). We were also delayed by Mrs. Doc Robert, who of late requires a walker, getting lost on the street outside Symphony Hall while I parked, we had to use our cell phones to find one another. So we arrived at the hall for our nominal 6:30 dining reservation at 7:15 for an 8:00 concert. But we managed to get through the buffet line in good time and were off to claim our seats with ten minutes to spare.

I won’t bore you with a moment-by-moment review. Suffice it to say that the Eight Symphony, which was here performed by only about 400 musicians (mostly singers), came up surprisingly short. When I say that, remember that Mahler himself, the finest orchestral composer of his time, considered the Eighth to be one of his finest works, although he never heard the Ninth, nor the Song of the Earth (in my mind his finest work), nor the unfinished Tenth.

The Eighth has two halves. The first recalls the Second and Third Symphonies’ first movements, being heavy on the brass, yet having infinitely delicate interludes in its 25 minutes. At first the choir intones a Pentecost hymn, “Veni creator spiritus,” over a bellowing organ and full orchestra with screaming winds and brass. The orchestration is lush, the music is powerful, the playing superb. There were moments, including the very opening and closing of the movement, that just blew us away. I make no criticism of what the BSO did with it that night.

There were some really wonderful aspects to the performance. One was that the children’s boy choir was placed in the lower balcony on one side. One soprano soloist was placed high up in the other balcony, along with a brass choir. Putting musicians around the hall like this always invigorates a performance. The eight vocal soloists included Christine Goerke, Ryan Speedo Green and Ying Fang, all of them operatic superstars, and they sang their hearts out.

A flaw in the performance is that Symphony Hall was just too small for the required forces (large orchestra, three keyboards, 8 vocal soloists, an offstage brass band, two adult choirs, children's choir). The audience space was reduced by over 100 seats to extend the stage—and still, the double choir barely had room to stand in the center rear. The left-right antiphonal effects were thus sacrificed. It would have been better to perform this on the larger Tanglewood stage, with one choir on the left of the orchestra and the other on the right.

The second half is an hour's quasi-operatic treatment of the legend of Faust. Why Mahler chose to present these as one work and not as two is beyond me. The shift in tone, language (Latin to German--imagine the choir's difficulties!) and attitude was a little bewildering. But, hey, he was a professional composer and I’m only an amateur critic.

This half just fell flat for Mrs. Doc and me. The music, not the performance, was at fault. We found the melodies too banal and the form too repetitive. The BSO did a fine job of it. There were outstanding solos from oboe, cello and horn; there was exquisite string sectional playing; there were arresting moments in the brasses (especially when the offstage band came in near the end). But it never moved us. An hour of repetitive banality—no matter how well sung and played—is still an hour poorly spent.

We were not the only ones to think so. A law professor friend who attended the performance felt so too. The audience, however, did not. The applause on the enormous closing chord was immediate, enthusiastic and sustained. There were flowers for the singers and bows galore for the BSO principals. The critics were much kinder on the piece than I have been above.

We drove home in a better mood, having learned something about navigating city streets with a walker and having some good news. This news is that we now know which night to take off in Amsterdam: it will be May 16^th, the night of the Eighth Symphony.

For photos of the concert, including one that will leave Elmer Fudd fans laughing, go to:

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For my earlier reviews:

https://ricochet.com/723270/memories-of-the-boston-symphony-1-11-20-and-of-the-metropolitan-opera-1-18-20/

https://ricochet.com/1002622/classical-music-is-back/

https://ricochet.com/1330264/notes-on-the-us-marine-corps-band-concerts-october-2022/

https://ricochet.com/701989/death-of-a-maestro/

https://ricochet.com/700496/memories-of-the-los-angeles-philharmonic-11-23-19/

https://ricochet.com/697094/memories-of-the-chicago-symphony-orchestra-11-15-19-and-of-the-metropolitan-opera-11-16-19/

https://ricochet.com/696987/memories-of-the-bavarian-radio-symphony-orchestra-11-9-19/

https://ricochet.com/692796/memories-of-the-leipzig-gewandhaus-orchestra-10-29-19/

https://ricochet.com/689120/memories-of-the-philadelphia-orchestra-10-17-19/

https://ricochet.com/683939/why-we-need-people-who-have-too-much-money/

https://ricochet.com/684177/memories-of-the-cleveland-orchestra-10-4-19/