A fulfilling farewell -- Ozawa begins weekend finales by leading BSO through a thrilling performance
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 4/19/2002
The line outside Symphony Hall began at 11 a.m. Long before rush seats for last night's concert went on sale at 5 p.m., the line stretched around the building and much of it represented wishful thinking.
Everyone knew that this weekend's performances mark a significant moment in the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the final subscription concerts led by Seiji Ozawa as music director as he brings a 29-year tenure to a close. When Ozawa appeared onstage to conduct Mahler's Ninth Symphony, a few minutes late, a standing ovation swept through the hall like a tidal wave. Ozawa didn't let it wash over him; instead he turned around to begin the performance.
This work is at once a natural choice for a moment of farewell - it is a symphony about leavetaking - and a ferocious challenge, because the music is technically and emotionally demanding, and requires every resource that an instrumentalist and a conductor can bring to it. It is also a very fulfilling choice to mark a great transition, because it is such a large and all-embracing work, music that has room for every experience life has to offer. Those experiences jostle, clash, and transform each other. For the music to work, the conductor must shape the gestures and the architecture according to the composer's precise instructions. But if he tries to impose himself, he will fail; in the end, this is music about acceptance and, in today's argot, about letting go. The long final adagio, one of the greatest experiences concert music has to offer, is built on one of the simplest musical gestures, the turn - the slow, obsessive circling around a central note. At the end, the circling ceases because the need for it is past; we are at last there, at some kind of ultimate truth.
Ozawa and the orchestra toughed it through some of the first movement; both conductor and orchestra were under high tension, which brought some remarkable qualities into the performance, but also some splinters, splatters, and roughage.
The middle two movements brought technical improvements without loss of focus and emotion, and there were wonderful solos across the entire range of the orchestra, from Thomas Rolf's clear high trumpet down to Gregg Henager's growling contrabassoon. Outstanding among the host was principal horn James Somerville, and the collective company was also thrilling, both in the intimate shadowplay and in the massed string attacks, which sounded like the molten core of the earth. The BSO's legendary tympanist, Everett Firth, is bringing his 50-year tenure to a close with these concerts; in his hands, the drums once again became melody and color, breath and pulse.
Ozawa's concentration was fierce - a way of maintaining control. He remains as enthralling to watch as when he was a young man. This is music full of simultaneous but contrary events, and his body registered them all.
The blueprint of the score became a vast structure under his guidance, and when the time came to relinquish control of detail, he did.
After the music had joined silence at the end, Ozawa took his time to lower his arms, and even after that the rapt attention continued in the hall, despite the wail of sirens outside.
Then came the release of a great, full-throated standing ovation that Ozawa tried to deflect by standing and circulating among the players, acknowledging their individual contributions to the collective effort. He brought Firth forward to a tumult that spread from the audience to the stage - side by side we saw conductor and the instrumentalist who most completely represents the proudest traditions of the orchestra. Finally, the orchestra refused to rise at Ozawa's signal, and joined the public in applauding Ozawa, man and musician, his history and our own.