Wild and witty

For me, the most memorable of Schuller's many distinguished concerts was a Mahler Third Symphony he led with the NEC Orchestra 20 years ago. I've always wished he'd do more Mahler. And the climax of this Schuller-fest was a long program in which he conducted his own Second Piano Concerto, with Veronica Jochum, for whom he composed it, and Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

Schuller's Ninth was quite a different story from Bernard Haitink's recent version with the BSO. If Haitink's was like a broad colorfield canvas, endless shades of the same muted hues, flat and all surface, Schuller's was like a Kandinsky, shapely, but achieving its elegance through the lively and dramatic juxtaposition of lines, angles, facets, and splotches of vibrant color. Haitink rarely conveys to me the impression that he thinks beyond or beneath the notes themselves. Schuller also thinks about notes. He apparently spent some 140 hours "correcting" Mahler's orchestral parts. So despite some distressingly sloppy playing from a student orchestra that has often in its constantly changing history been regarded as the most phenomenal ensemble in Boston, harmonies and textures still sounded as clean and unvarnished as newly refurbished Jordan Hall now looks. In fact, though the new acoustical ambiance of the hall--bright, clean, dry -- was cruel in exposing problems of technique, intonation, and unity of attack, it also let you hear clearly some of the rich and strange things Schuller was up to.

The opening evoked the sound of an orchestra tuning up (I believe this was intentional). And throughout this great first-movement Andante comodo, Schuller emphasized the "comodo" (comfortable? comforting?) aspect of the tempo marking with buoyant pacing, lilting dynamic turns, and clear balances -- playing up rather then "blending" Mahler's striking contrasts (flute, horn, and cellos, for example, or bassoon and piccolo in the second movement), highlighting rather than blurring Mahler's fascinating details, perhaps especially through a thinning out of the strings.

Schuller's surprise in the satirical second movement ("In the tempo of a comfortable Landler. Somewhat clumsy and very coarse.") was that there were two rambunctious dances instead of just one (the second dance, a waltz, is usually played -- convincingly -- as a piece of Ringstrasse glitz, something in a Viennese ballroom, not at some hillside beergarden). In both the second movement and the third (Rondo-Burleske, with its parodies of academic counterpoint), Schuller called for a deliberate and uninhibited crudeness (biting staccatos, rough violins over hilariously elephantine horn trills), a sense of digging in that was very different from the way Haitink smoothed over Mahler's thigh-slapping, nose-thumbing (especially at the academic establishment), often nasty jokes.

Most conductors slow down the midsection of this parodic Rondo movement to foreshadow the heart-wrenching farewells of the Adagio finale. Schuller took Mahler's "somewhat held back" marking at almost the same brisk tempo as the surrounding parts. It sounded odd. But it also prepared for the remarkably sweet and life-affirming, almost Brahmsian Adagio -- taken at a much faster clip and with an attention to more of Mahler's shifts of tempo than is customary, and hardly the traditional view of this symphony as Mahler's farewell to life.

For all its flaws (let me exempt the sweet-toned concertmaster and first oboist), the orchestra was also learning some valuable lessons. This is music that is more important than anyone playing it. The playing was certainly a step above what I heard at the appalling Jordan Hall re-opening night. In its cohesion of spirit and musical purpose, this was a powerful and vivid performance, one I'll enjoy thinking about for years to come.

Schuller's Piano Concerto (1981) is a blast from the past -- an energetic, highly charged, personal response to, say, the most colorful and jazziest elements of the two Ravel concertos (Schuller is one of the world's jazz experts), combined with a songful, Rachmaninov-like lyricism. A moody, smoky-blue Adagio was an oasis after the fiery reds and oranges of the "agitated" first movement and the crisp black and white snap and crackle of the brief Allegro vivace finale. The orchestra was at its best, and Jochum had a full-hearted energy, verve, and style. She wasn't note-perfect either, but she played as if she owned the piece -- which she does.

After intermission, Dr. Walter Gerhardt, the German Consul General, awarded Schuller the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit from the president of Germany. Another plume in Schuller's very feathery cap.

The BSO's major undertaking of the fall season was a staged version of Stravinsky's major opera, The Rake's Progress -- with W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman's witty and poignant libretto based on William Hogarth's famous series of paintings about the dissipation and destruction of young Tom Rakewell, an 18th-century Englishman who has his priorities wrong and sells his soul to the Devil (one Nick Shadow) for sex in the fast lane and an easy shilling rather than devote himself to true love (in the person of Anne Trulove) and hard work. The Rake tells a moral story but also has fun with its dips and plunges into immorality (it owes a lot to Weill and Brecht's Threepenny Opera in this, as both teams owe a big debt to John Gay's The Beggar's Opera).

It's also Stravinsky's most Mozartian score (an important theme introduced by the horn comes directly from a Mozart horn concerto). So in some ways it was wonderful to have the orchestra on stage rather than in an opera-house pit, and the BSO was at its best. Tim Morrison's gorgeous slow trumpet solo brought tears to the eyes. Elizabeth Ostling (flute), William Hudgins (clarinet), Richard Svoboda (bassoon), and, in the aforementioned horn solo, Charles Kavalovsky, back at the very top of his form, were unforgettable. Mark Kroll's harpsichord always had the drollest of responses to the recitative. The strings were refined without being emasculated, though Seiji Ozawa might have asked for more edge, or more ice. Oddly for Ozawa's Stravinsky, the slower passages retained their tension while some of the faster sections could have been even zippier or fizzier. My most serious reservation concerns the overall sense of pace.

Tenor Philip Langridge was an agile-voiced and agile-bodied Rakewell, thoroughly convincing and finally a figure of great pathos. Dawn Upshaw glistened, a dewy-fresh Anne, demure yet determined -- though I wish she hadn't pulled back on her climactic high C at the end of her great rescue aria (a note she nails on her recording). Veteran bass Paul Plishka made a menacing yet gentlemanly and unusually full-voiced Nick Shadow. Steven Cole, a tenor who can leap and do cartwheels as he sings, astounded as the appropriately named auctioneer, Sellem. And warm-voiced mezzo Jane Henschel was a cuddlier-than-usual Baba the Turk. Stravinsky's two act breaks were reduced to a single intermission after the public revelation that Rakewell's new wife is a bearded lady, but the dim lighting made her beard almost invisible.

There were excellent performances too from Joan Khára (the brothel owner, Mother Goose), Kevin Short (Anne's father), and Boston's own Robert Honeysucker as a particularly sympathetic madhouse keeper. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus was wonderful as various rakes, roarers, prostitutes, and other Londoners (though why were so many of them wearing nightgowns at an auction?). Acrobatic/gymnastic dancers Andrew Pachco and Mam Smith -- sweeping open curtains, pushing scenery on carts, swinging on a swing -- added a delightfully theatrical flair to the commedia dell'arte framework. This was probably stage director David Kneuss's best work for the BSO.

Too bad it was so hard to make out most of the words, because this libretto has as much literature as plot. Operatic English isn't easy to sing, and neither Stravinsky nor his librettists went out of their way to make it easier. At least in an opera-house pit an orchestra doesn't directly block the voices. At Symphony Hall, with singers and players both on stage (the singers on a higher platform), the words didn't stand a chance. The program book included a detailed plot summary but no libretto. Above the stage, an angled projection screen had some colorful amoebas where supertitles might have been more useful. Langridge, Henschel, Cole, and Honeysucker had exceptionally clear diction that slipped through the orchestral cloud. Upshaw and Plishka, fine in recitative, sounded mushy elsewhere. Lots of people left during the intermission, and who could blame them if they felt left out? But they missed some of the best singing and playing and certainly some of the wittiest, most poignant, and most ravishing music of the season. For all its clever and colorful staging, this Rake might have been more seductive on the radio.