I prefer Copland's Appalachian Spring in its original, lighter version for 13 instruments, but if I have to hear it in his arrangement for full orchestra, I want to hear a performance like Sung's. The opening dawn music really unfolded like the dawn. There was nothing rushed, yet nothing dragged. She had me on the edge of my seat, and when the often repeated triad that's at the heart of the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" finally, climactically, turns into the full "Simple Gifts," the effect was heartstopping and very moving. Eloquent playing abounded: John Ferrillo's oboe sailing over Thomas Rolfs's muted trumpet, William R. Hudgins's consoling clarinet. And from the opening notes of The Miraculous Mandarin, Bartók grabbed us by the throat and took us on a breathlessly grim joyride. Yet as opposed to some BSO performances of this piece in recent years, Sung captured the underlying melancholy of the sinister plot. (Three gangsters force a prostitute to entrap customers they can rob.) She's a real narrator. Her rhythmic acuity and empathetic pacing are marvels. Her hands and arms sculpt the larger patterns. The BSO has itself remarkably good assistant conductors at the moment (the other is Julian Kuerti), and this was an auspicious debut.
Four of the most talented young string players in town — the phenomenal Gabriela Diaz on first violin joined by violinist Gabriel Boyers, violist Karina Fox, and Opera Boston first cellist David Russell — have combined to form the Schubertiade Music Players, and on April 4 they played Haydn's 70-minute Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, seven substantial slow sonata movements preceded by a slow introduction and followed by a dizzying earthquake ("terramoto"). The playing was both exquisite (pizzicato droplets in the "I thirst" movement) and harrowing. And the clear and resonant acoustics of Harvard Square's intimate Pierre Menard Gallery (as long as the front door was closed) were ideal for chamber music.
In the second part of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, which composer and Emmanuel Music acting artistic director John Harbison conducted as Emmanuel's major spring offering two weekends back, mezzo-soprano Pamela Dellal sang Bach's great prayer for mercy, "Erbarme dich," and Rose Mary Harbison (Harbison's wife) played the sublime violin obbligato. Eloquent, moving, soul-searching, comforting, this music is one of the high points of the Passion— which means it's one of the high points in Western culture. And it almost inevitably disappoints. But Dellal was in rich, overflowing voice, and the great warmth of her personality pervaded every note. And violinist Harbison's fine, vibratoless playing felt like blood coursing through veins — a life force, a desire for life. This was the climactic moment of a performance that radiated balance, proportion, and a spiritual acceptance that evolved from asking the most profound spiritual questions. It did not disappoint.
This St. Matthew was quite different in tone from Emmanuel's very first St. Matthew in 1996 (a surprisingly late start for these Bach specialists), under the late Craig Smith, who put rather more emphasis on the drama of the questioning (as I recall Harbison himself did when he conducted it last, memorably, for the Cantata Singers back in 1969). Afterward, when I mentioned my thoughts to one of the singers in the chorus, she replied, "Well, that's John. . . . Or at least, it's John answering Craig."
