Nutcracker fever

The BSO and Boston Ballet Orchestra face off

by Lloyd Schwartz

Nutcracker, the last of Tchaikovsky's three great ballet scores, may be his most consistently inspired (though he himself thought it his weakest). In Boston, Christmastime is Nutcracker time. And this year, even the Boston Symphony Orchestra has Nutcracker fever. Maestro Seiji Ozawa scheduled a weekend's worth of complete second acts (the act with all the ethnic dances) on a program with the Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto, and last Friday he led the entire ballet score.

A complete Nutcracker without dancers (though Ozawa on the podium always guarantees some dancing) may be superfluous in a city where annually (and perennially) so many thousands of people can see the fully staged ballet. But the enchanting music -- irresistibly tuneful and endlessly colorful (those winds! that celesta!), the perfect balance between sumptuousness and delicacy -- creates its own scenery and costumes. And a good argument can be made to hear any performance by a great orchestra in a great hall.

Tchaikovsky's first act has some of the greatest music he ever wrote, especially the surging transformation scene, the beginning of the mysterious Drosselmeyer's magic spell in which Clara shrinks to Barbie-size and the Christmas tree and all the toys grow to epic proportions. Much of the music in the first act, though, is purely narrative. Two weeks earlier, when Ozawa led Ravel's children's opera, L'enfant et les sortilèges, every note told a story. But his more "symphonic" approach to Nutcracker didn't have that storytelling quality. The leisurely pace of the party preparations was more stately than bustling. The inflated brass playing at the end of the magic spell sounded like the entrance of the gods into Valhalla. Nothing had much swing. The Waltz of the Flowers bogged down in its own heaviness. With Ozawa's square, inflexible phrasing, each reappearance of a melodic line meant to accompany a different activity (guests arriving or departing, the beginning of a dance and the end of a dance, the actual battle between the Nutcracker and an army of mice and the retelling of that battle) was repeated in the same mechanical way.

On the other hand, the orchestra played with phenomenal clarity. The Arabian dance (Coffee) had a serpentine insinuation. The Russian trepak had a thrilling exhilaration (no one could dance it so fast, but there were no dancers to worry about). When the rich BSO cellos joined the higher strings in the second "sentence" of the magic spell, they had the human warmth of a humming chorus. The BSO winds, especially the flute section (including that week's acting assistant principal, Kathy Ransom, from LA, and Fenwick Smith), oboist Alfred Genovese, clarinettist William R. Hudgins, and bassoonist Richard Svoboda, worked overtime. Charles Schlueter had a lively yet restrained trumpet solo in the Spanish dance (Chocolate). Ann Hobson Pilot's swirling harp glissandos filled the hall. And violinist Jerome Rosen on celesta created a far more bewitching and believable Sugar Plum Fairy than did the Boston Ballet's grinning ballerina, Jennifer Gelfand.

The biggest round of applause went to the 15 7-to-13 year-old Performing Artists at Lincoln School (PALS, directed by Johanna Hill Simpson), who marched out in front of the stage dressed in bright blue to sing the wordless snowflake music at the end of act one. Some high notes were a little dicy, but the charm was real.

Still, Jonathan McPhee and the Boston Ballet Orchestra provided the more authentic, the more knowing, and certainly the more compelling musical performance. These musicians recognize exactly which actions their instruments are meant to portray, and they deliver the rhythmic lilt that has to support and inspire the dancers. The sound of the strings coming from the big pit at the Wang Center (Michael Rosenbloom, concertmaster) -- with only four violas, four cellos, and three basses -- doesn't have the density of the BSO's, but the magic spell, for example, with its extra little lift and thrust at the end of each ascending phrase, was far more moving than the BSO's. The brass section, featuring Bruce Hall's elegant trumpeting and Richard Menaul (horn), Paul Gay (trombone), and Donald Rankin (tuba), suggested soaring nobility, not Wagnerian stentorianism.

Peggy Friedland and the marvelous flutes flitted gingerly above the lively rhythms provided by bassoons (Donald Bravo) and the entire team of percussionists (who played for color as well as lilt). James Bulger was the seductive oboist, and William Wrzesien's clarinet was uncannily supple and haunting in the Arabian dance. These players are no poor relations, and probably no one outside Russia understands this score better than McPhee.