Ozawa's anniversary marks a varied season
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 09/13/98
Seiji Ozawa is celebrating his 25th anniversary as music director of the Boston Symphony, which has planned a gala commemorative season in his honor. A free performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on Boston Common Sept. 27 represents a "thank you" from the conductor and the orchestra to the city. Four Boston-based soloists -- Dominique Labelle, Mary Westbrook-Geha, Richard Clement and Robert Honeysucker -- join Ozawa, the orchestra, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.
Ozawa's soloists in the opening weeks of the Symphony Hall season include the Belgian bass baritone Jose van Dam, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Krystian Zimerman (continuing his Rachmaninoff Concerto cycle that Deutsche Grammophon is recording), Ben Heppner, Thomas Quasthoff, and Jessye Norman.
That's quite an impressive lineup, with no letdown in the weeks when Ozawa won't be here: Bernard Haitink will be in residence for two weeks, with violinist Christian Tetzlaff as his soloist in the Sibelius Concerto, and the other guest conductors this fall include Andre Previn and James Levine. Slovenian pianist Dubravka Tomsic will make her only local appearances of the season playing Saint-Saens's Second Concerto in the debut concerts of new assistant conductor Federico Cortese in November.
The BankBoston Celebrity Series is our chief purveyor of performances by international touring artists. Among the highlights are the St. Petersburg Philharmonic (Oct. 4), pianist Garrick Ohlsson (Nov. 1), mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt (Nov. 7), and the Borromeo String Quartet with Menahem Pressler at the piano (Nov. 15). Kendra Colton sings in the Emerging Artists Series Dec. 11.
The Boston Early Music Festival brings in leading performers of the field, including Hesperion XX with Jordi Savall (Oct. 31) and the much publicized baroque violinist Andrew Manze, who appears with the ensemble Romanesca Nov. 14 in Paine Hall.
The major operatic event is the first modern performance of "The Philosopher's Stone," an opera composed collaboratively by a number of figures associated with "The Magic Flute," including Mozart. Martin Pearlman and Boston Baroque were enterprising enough to obtain the first performance rights to this recent discovery by musicologist David Buch; Telarc will record the work following the Jordan Hall concert performances Oct. 30 and Nov. 1, which are likely to receive international attention.
Boston is still without a working opera house, but the Boston Lyric Opera moves into a new home for which it has high hopes, the Shubert Theatre. The season opens with a new production of Verdi's "La Traviata" with Dominique Labelle, last season's golden-voiced Lucia, singing her first Violetta Nov. 11.
Boston Bel Canto Opera presents a concert performance of Verdi's "Aida" in Jordan Hall Sept. 26; Joanna Porackova, who sang a wildly applauded Norma for the company last season, appears in the title role. The Boston Academy of Music presents a staged production of John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" in the Emerson Majestic Theatre Sept. 17-19. Sequentia brings its celebrated production of Hildegard von Bingen's "Ordo Virtutem" -- not an opera maybe, but definitely music theater -- to the Church of the Advent Nov. 7, an event presented by the Boston Early Music Festival.
New music flourishes in the capable and experienced hands of such long-lived ensembles as the Boston Musica Viva (Oct. 16, a 30th birthday retrospective), Collage (Elliott Carter's Triple Duo on Nov. 22), Alea III, and Dinosaur Annex. The relatively new kid on the block, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project under the direction of Gil Rose, offers an 80th birthday tribute to George Rochberg Oct. 17.
Orchestral flourishes
Conductor Benjamin Zander has been a cult figure in Boston for the better part of 30 years; now he has achieved international status and a major contract to record the Beethoven Symphonies with London's Philharmonia Orchestra or Telarc. Zander will complete his Mahler Symphony cycle with the Boston Philharmonic when he conducts the Eighth after the first of the year; the opening concert of the season Oct. 10 and 11, which features the Dvorak Cello Concerto with Colin Carr, also brings a preview of the Beethoven cycle with the Seventh Symphony.
Other area orchestras are offering programs of interest. Harry Ellis Dickson celebrates his 90th birthday this season; he conducts the Boston Classical Orchestra in Brahms's Double Concerto in Fanueil Hall Oct. 30-Nov. 1 with soloists Lucia Lin and cellist Owen Young. Lin also appears with the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston Nov. 22 in Jordan Hall, playing the Barber Concerto. Conductor Richard Pittman's concerts with the New England Philharmonic include a performance of Beethoven's Third Concerto with Leonid Hambro Nov. 1 in Boston University's Tsai Performance Center. Trumpeter Jeffrey Work appears with the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra under Gisele Ben-Dor in Sanders Theatre Nov. 29. Knowledgeable music lovers do not neglect the concerts by David Hoose and the Boston University Symphony Orchestra in the Tsai Center (the first one on Oct. 6 features Beethoven's "Eroica" and Nielsen's "Inextinguishable"); the eagerly awaited annual appearance by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski with the New England Conservatory Orchestra is Dec. 3 in Jordan Hall.
Boston is one of America's great centers of choral music. The annual Handel oratorio performance by the Boston Cecilia under the direction of Donald Teeters, who is celebrating his 30th anniversary as music director, is one of the things that keeps it that way. Nov. 20 in Jordan Hall brings the local premiere of "Deborah" with a cast headed by Jeffrey Gall, Kendra Colton, and Sharon Baker. The Cantata Singers lead off with a program of German choral music under the direction of David Hoose (Nov. 6 and 8 in Jordan Hall). The Handel & Haydn Society offers an all-Beethoven program under the direction of Christopher Hogwood Oct. 16 and 18 in Symphony Hall; its prestigious annual performances of "Messiah," this season under Hogwood's direction, begin Dec. 6 -- the soloists include soprano Cyndia Sieden and baritone Sanford Sylvan. The Chorus Pro Musica is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a survey of works the organization premiered or introduced. The first concert Nov. 6 features Daniel Pinkham's "Passion According to St. Mark" in commemoration of the composer's 70th birthday.
Small but fine
Hardly a night goes by without a distinguished chamber music event, or several of them. Each program this season by the Boston Chamber Music Society (which leads off Oct. 2 in Jordan Hall and Oct. 4 in Sanders Theatre) features one of the Mozart String Quintets. Emmanuel Music enters the third year of its seven-year Schubert survey Oct. 11 with a program featuring piano music and songs with Kendra Colton, Donald Wilkinson, Kayo Iwama, and Ya-Fei Chang. The Borromeo Quartet performs regularly at the New England Conservatory and elsewhere; the Lydian Quartet is in residence at Brandeis; the Muir, at Boston University; the Mendelssohn continues its annual presence in the Blodgett Series at Harvard.
There are two emerging piano trios of unusual interest, the Boston Trio and Triple Helix. Pianist Beth Levin has joined the Boston Artists Ensemble, which performs at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem and in Trinity Church in Newton. The Gardner Museum offers an outstanding series of solo recitals and chamber music events featuring established artists on Sunday afternoons at 1:30 (BSO principal flute Jacques Zoon and friends Oct. 11; soprano Benita Valente with pianist Seymour Lipkin Oct. 18; pianist Russell Sherman Nov. 1) and emerging artists on Saturdays at 1:30 (pianist Christopher Taylor, for example, Oct. 10). The Gardner's series opens Sept. 27 with the premiere of former artist-in-residence Kenneth Frazelle's "The Motion of Stone" -- the occasion also marks the debut of new and more comfortable chairs in the Tapestry Room.
Watch for the regular distinguished chamber music programs at area music schools, particularly the New England Conservatory (the First Monday), the Boston Conservatory (which also introduces a series of piano recitals this season, including Andrew Rangell in two programs devoted to the Bach Partitas Oct. 31-Nov. 1), Boston University, Brandeis, the Longy School, and the All-Newton Music School.
Early music events, in addition to those already mentioned, include the long-running and high-class series by the Museum Trio and its friends at the Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday afternoons; the Boston Camerata's live performance of its new Erato CD, "Liberty Tree: American Music 1776-81" in Fanueil Hall Nov. 8, and the itinerant "Concerts by Candlelight" sponsored by the Cambridge Society for Early Music; harpist Andrew Lawrence-King travels around the circuit Nov. 16-22.
Hot one shots
Even the most experienced concertgoers read the weekly listings in Calendar for information about "one-off" events they might otherwise miss. Tapestry, for example, is at least as interesting a female vocal ensemble as the hit-parade Anonymous Four; Sept. 28 in First Church, Congregational in Cambridge, Tapestry celebrates the release of its latest Telarc CD.
Boston-based musicians have generous hearts and often offer their services to benefit worthy causes. Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Seiji Ozawa in a "Concert for the Cure," a benefit for breast-cancer research, in Symphony Hall Oct. 4. Andre Previn will be the soloist in the Mozart Piano Concerto, K.491. Collaborative pianist Judith Gordon has organized her annual benefit for the Hospitality Program; tenor Willian Hite and members of the BSO join her in Emmanuel Church Sept. 26 for music by Mozart and Schumann. And there is lots more where all of this is coming from...
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