|
I WISH that kind of intricate interplay between orchestra and soloist had been at work when former BSO principal flute Jacques Zoon returned to play Mozart’s two flute concertos with Martin Pearlman’s Boston Baroque (in preparation for a Telarc recording). Two years ago, Zoon and Pearlman got their wires crossed, and each prepared a different concerto. Yet though ensemble was a little rough, Zoon amazed with his first public outing on Baroque flute. This time, everyone was more together, but Zoon himself seemed slightly below top form (maybe he was tired from playing on two consecutive nights). His articulate speed of two years ago was a little less dependable, with a number of unsounded notes. He seemed to trade his playful, characterful approach to this bravura but relatively lightweight music for something plainer. He wasn’t getting much encouragement from Pearlman to make his phrasing more personal. The lovely, serenade-like slow movements went best. Zoon then joined the orchestra for Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, which will also be on the recording. He and oboist Marc Schachman made beautiful music together. But it was all too loud, orchestral balances seemed haphazard, and rhythmic definition came more from John Grimes’s buoyant, witty timpani than from Pearlman’s beat. The Jupiter is famous for its cornucopia of themes, each with a distinct and contrasting personality. With Grimes’s help, the militant opening had considerable zest. But the tune Mozart borrowed from one of his sauciest comic arias had no slyness, no insinuation, no twinkle. The Andante cantabile lacked the piercing urgency of its songfulness. The Menuetto opens with a theme that floats down like so many fireworks, then bounces back up; but here too, the notes had no ulterior motive, no meaningfully shaped phrases. Well played as it was, Mozart’s last symphony seemed energetic but without Mozart’s miraculous mixture of friskiness and grandeur. THE WORD "JOURNEY" has been used a lot lately (the Boston Philharmonic’s "Mahler Journey," the MFA’s "Rembrandt Journey"). Pianist Andrew Rangell may not use the J-word, but his concerts are true exploratory ventures, with which all the pieces, in surprising but illuminating order, bring you to a place you’ve never been. I was sad to discover that a scheduling conflict will keep me from his April 3 Boston Marquee recital in the FleetBoston Celebrity Series. But last week I learned he was previewing it in a more intimate venue: the 43-seat Music Room, in Arlington, a recording space with marvelous acoustics. The first half started with heavenly Sweelinck variations (circa 1610) and wound up with a new piece by John McDonald, a visionary prelude to Ives’s overwhelming Concord Sonata, which took up the entire second half. An unusual series of Beethoven pieces (including a late string-quartet movement on the piano) was interrupted by a mysterious, spacy tone poem by Takemitsu. All this leaping around time and space was a wonderful preparation for the vast Ives, which is by turns conversational and argumentative (the "Emerson" movement), hallucinatory ("Hawthorne"), tenderly domestic ("The Alcotts"), and out-of-body ("Thoreau," in which the pianist also whistles). Rangell delivered one of the most brilliant and moving renditions of this great work I’ve ever heard. I wish I could hear it again come April.
page 1
page 2
|
