Some outstanding singers were no surprise to Bostonians. Baritone James Maddalena (the original Nixon in Nixon in China) is also a superbly understated comedian, with some astonishing low notes; he had a field day as the shyster marriage broker Kecal. Tenor Frank Kelley, with flaming handlebar moustache, was a brilliant Circus Master, and he delivered the best line in the translation, describing the alluring Esmeralda (the alluring Sara Heaton) as "titillating attention with tarantellas on the tightrope" (anticipating not only G&S but also the fast-talking auctioneer in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress). And another of Boston's best baritones, David Kravitz, caught Marenka's strapped father in both his narrow- and his open-mindedness. Even more praiseworthy was the quality of the numerous duets, and the comfortable intimacy both Pelzig and Rose appeared to have inspired.
Twenty-five years ago, Sir Colin Rex Davis stepped down after his dozen years as the Boston Symphony Orchestra's principal guest conductor. He was so popular, his fans hoped he'd become the BSO music director. Bostonians still love him. He closed the BSO season with a pretty but oddly bland performance of Mozart's magnificent C-major Piano Concerto, No. 25, with British pianist Imogen Cooper (whom I've heard play before with more point and feeling), and then a blow-out version of one of his specialties, Berlioz's Te Deum, a huge hymn inspired by the memory of Napoleon, for double chorus (the Tanglewood Festival, singing by heart and with heart), children's chorus (PALS, in one of its most vivid performances), organ (John Finney pulling out all the stops), and tenor (the Met's wonderful Matthew Polenzani, brother of popular Boston indie folk musician Rose Polenzani).
The Te Deum is far from Berlioz's most ravishing piece. Even many Berliozians find it bloated and aggressively loud. (Here there were five cymbals plus horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, and ophicleide going full blast.) Yet it's pure Berlioz, tremendously powerful in the way climax builds upon climax — a quality Sir Colin, at 81, has mastered — and in its sudden moments of introspection, a quality Polenzani, with his enormous dynamic range, emotional honesty, and naturally beautiful tone, has also mastered. His solo was the warmest, most quietly radiant passage in the entire performance.
This was also a goodbye to three veteran players, all retiring at the end of the summer: violinists Amnon Levy and Ronald Wilkison and harpist Ann Hobson Pilot. She'll be back to open next season with a piece written for her by John Williams, and she'll play it again at a later subscription concert along with some Debussy and Elliott Carter.
Two years ago, shortly after she announced she'd been diagnosed with cancer, soprano Dawn Upshaw had to cancel her Boston Celebrity Series concert — because she'd come down with a cold. The cold is gone, the cancer has been treated, and Upshaw was back, as she had promised, accompanied by the estimable pianist Gilbert Kalish, at a sold-out Jordan Hall. The program may not have been technically demanding, but it captured her best qualities: her communicativeness, her musicianship, her superb diction in several languages, and her personal warmth and unpretentiousness.
