All-Americans At Carnegie

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Last month, James Levine began his second season as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Of course, he retains a presence in New York, as music director of the Metropolitan Opera. It seems certain that, for as long as he leads the BSO, he will bring that orchestra to Carnegie Hall often. He and the Bostonians will appear three times this season – the first of those concerts was Monday night.


Mr. Levine chose an all-American program, which must have pleased many critics. Funny: This lot has no use for nationalism, most of the time – but when it comes to music, they turn all blood-and-soil. As I said, funny.


The conductor began the evening with a work he loves well: Charles Ives’s “Three Places in New England.” You might say that, for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, this is local music. A few seasons ago, Mr. Levine conducted this work in Carnegie Hall with his former orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, for whom it is not local music. But that was no excuse for the poor performance registered on that occasion.


Monday night’s performance was infinitely better. First of all, the BSO made beautiful sounds, as they would all evening long. They used to be called “the Aristocrat of Orchestras,” and the label seems to fit again. Every part of the Ives score was clear, and nothing was out of balance. Mr. Levine approached this music simply, straightforwardly, not trying to do too much with it. This music ought to take you to places far away – and this is what it did.


In my view, the first movement – “St. Gaudens” – might have been a little slow, somewhat plodding and careful. But the second movement – “Putnam’s Camp” – was duly energetic (although not stupidly raucous). And the final movement – “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” – was dreamy, almost surreal.


After the Ives, Mr. Levine turned to another piece he loves well, and has programmed often: “Time Cycle,” by Lukas Foss, written in 1959-60 for the American soprano Adele Addison. It comprises four songs, on texts both English and German, by Auden, Housman, Kafka, and Nietzsche. What this work requires is precision, and sensitivity, and self-control – contained emotion. And everything was in place on Monday night.


The soloist was Dawn Upshaw, who has suffered inconsistency in recent years. But she was at the top of her game on this occasion, accurate, assured, smart. Her lines were clean; her rhythm was exact; her diction was clear. She negotiated Mr. Foss’s tricky intervals with ease, and she kept her mannerisms to a minimum. In fact, they were nonexistent. Mr. Levine’s affinity for this music was obvious, and his orchestra did what he wanted.


Mr. Foss, born in 1922, was on hand to take bows.


So was Elliott Carter, born in 1908 (in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, incidentally).This is yet another composer to whom Mr. Levine turns over and over. On Monday’s bill was a new work, “Three Illusions,” completed last year. Three movements last about three minutes each. They are very much like Mr. Carter: well-proportioned, logical. They are now majestic, now squirmy, now savage. The middle movement – “Fons Juventatis” – uses those spooky, shuddering forest sounds so common in today’s music. They seem to be mandated, by some statute book.


Mr. Levine and the orchestra repeated this movement, as a kind of encore.


And they ended with Gershwin’s Concerto in F, for which Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the French pianist, was soloist. By now, there is no need to remark on the affinity between French musicians and Gershwin, between them and American jazz. I might simply note that Philippe Entremont’s recording of the Concerto in F with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra is still on the market, after all these years.


As expected, Mr. Thibaudet brought elegance and verve to the concerto, along with ample technique. He struck a nice balance between the jazz hall and the … well, concert hall. He did not try to be too vulgar or too cool. Yet this performance was not entirely unobjectionable. In the slow movement, Mr. Thibaudet went in for some odd accents: banged, harsh. And he fussed with rhythm perhaps more than is wise. In the cadenza, however – or quasi-cadenza – he showed that he is one of the great colorists among us.


The third movement, a toccata, ought to play itself, almost: Just join it for the ride. And yet Mr. Thibaudet interfered with this music, emphasizing what did not need to be emphasized. The movement was slightly stilted – and did not quite catch fire, as it should. But there was plenty to admire, as there always is, with this pianist.


A final thought: Last season in Carnegie Hall, Andre Previn – one of the great Gershwinists – played the Concerto in F with the Oslo Philharmonic, conducting from the keyboard. Jean-Yves Thibaudet is a fine pianist, but wouldn’t it have been nice to witness James Levine – student of the famed piano pedagogue Rosina Lhevinne – do the same? As if he didn’t have enough to do.


The New York Sun

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