The Laureate

L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is not limited to citizens who respect French “civil law” and are over 30; the prestigious organization, established in 1957 and confirmed as part of the Ordre national du Merité by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963, occasionally presents awards to “foreign luminaries.” One of the principal distinctions of France, it is awarded to up to 200 persons a year.

Anne Azéma, the blond-tressed Artistic Director of Boston Camerata, was just designated one of those luminaries, a Chevalier (“Knight”), a “distinction qui rend hommage à vôtre parcours remarquable.”

Azéma, born in France, has lived in Boston for many years and became a citizen of the United States in 2004. Well known to Boston audiences for her many years as soloist with Boston Camerata (of which she became Artistic Director in 2008), she also is a distinguished scholar and researcher, leading her own musical teams on a series of original programs (concerts and recordings) of Medieval music. Among other rewards she is a co-recipient of the Grand Prix du Disque.

Boston Camerata, renowned for its performances of early music, was founded under the umbrella of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but it was Joel Cohen who established its visibility on the Boston and international music scene after he took over as Music Director in 1968. Under the auspices of Radio France, Boston Camerata began touring Europe in 1974 and has carried on an international touring schedule ever since. Cohen is now Music Director Emeritus.

Azéma leaves this week for concerts in the south of France followed by recitals and concerts of Medieval German music in Germany. She returns in time for Boston Camerata’s first concert of the season on Sunday, October 31, at Harvard Memorial Church. The concert at 4 pm, entitled “Veni, Imeneo!”, calls on the Roman god of marriage to celebrate that institution as it was in Cinquecento Italia with songs by Monteverdi, Dufay, Josquin, and Marenzio. Perhaps BMInt readers will get a chance to see her new medal, an eight-point, silver green-enameled asterisk with the inscription “République Française.“

Bettina A. Norton, executive editor and F. Lee Eiseman, publisher

Composer Howard Frazin starts every WordSong forum by reminiscing about childhood trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, where he remembers entering the Monet gallery in the Impressionist wing and experiencing what he now calls, “The Implicit Conversation.” In this gallery hung seven of Monet’s Haystacks, silently arranged by the curator, and the young Frazin discovered many things about light, color, and shape from interacting with these variations on a theme. Seeing a grouping of paintings on one subject is a unique curatorial gambit that encourages viewers to make comparisons and develop a relationship to the subject itself, in all its incarnations.

Frazin, whose childhood centered on drawing, has always kept this concept close to his work, and in the last 12 years has begun to apply the Implicit Conversation directly to the concert experience. In 2009, he and composer Tom Schnauber, who chairs the Performing Arts Department at Emmanuel College, teamed up to present WordSong, a unique concert format that aims to engage audiences with new music in a meaningful way.

After my reading, Frazin and Schnauber set the stage for a lively discussion of Cummings’ iconic poem. The poem is highly charged with imagery and ambiguity, not to mention a rich history in our cultural consciousness, and the discussion was lively. The host of the concert, Evelyn Haralampu, a partner at Burns & Levinson and a major donor to WordSong, rightly noted that lawyers “have a thing for words.” Precise or vague, words are a lawyer’s primary tool, and interpreting poetry with a roomful of them was a noteworthy – if intimidating – exercise.

Near the middle of the audience sat a small group of high school students from the Boston Arts Academy. At one point, an older gentleman spoke confidently about the poet’s allusions to the Greek god Pan (the “goat-footed balloon-man”). Not long afterward, a young student from BAA, unaware of its relevance, made a similarly perceptive observation in much simpler terms. The student had a visceral reaction to the underlying tone in the poem, and the older gentleman effectively gave this reaction a context.

This spirited interaction between diverse audience types is one of the most interesting products of WordSong, Frazin pointed out. “Art gets obsessed with itself sometimes. It becomes all about being referential,” he said, but in this small interchange there was both a cultural backdrop and an intuitive emotional response. “This is what art is for!” he exclaimed gleefully.

Having plunged completely into the poem’s many layers of meaning, the WordSong forum continued directly with the presentation of four newly composed song settings for cello, marimba, and voice. Performed by percussionist Robert Schulz, cellist Raphael Popper-Keizer, and mezzo-soprano Krista River, the pieces were extraordinarily different from one another and presented various readings of the text. Pieces by Schnauber and Frazin, as well as young composers Adam Simon and Benjamin Pesetsky, were programmed in an order “curated” by the performers, and the program booklet included space for “a few words or phrases that reflect your visceral reaction to the music.”

At intermission, audience members could mingle, network, eat, and drink. What followed though, in the culminating discussion, was quite remarkable. Tom Schnauber began simply by opening up the floor for anyone to comment on how the music affected their previous reading of the poem. Did the pieces meet their expectations or did they suggest a new angle for reading the poem? Were the pieces successful? Composers are apt to discuss these and other questions with each other, but rarely do they have such conversations with their audience.

That the pieces were all quite different made for much discussion in itself. Simon’s song takes Cummings’s lively evocation of springtime and sets it as a nostalgic lament. Benjamin Pesetsky’s piece contains an animated dance-like ostinato with a touch of menace. The audience also plumbed the effectiveness of certain pieces in conveying the ambiguity of the poem, the role of each instrument in evoking the poem’s atmosphere, and how a composer treated the visual element of Cummings’ poem. Audience members also asked the composers very pointed questions about their compositional decisions. It was as if some in the audience, having “lived” with the poem for a few hours (or many years), were formulating ideas for their own compositions. Very organically, as the conversation converged on single pieces, the performers made the decision to re-play each work, providing the audience a second hearing.

Schnauber likes to tell forum audiences that the best a composer can normally expect after a concert of “new” music is, “I liked your piece. It was really…interesting.” New music composers experience collective dismay at the low expectations for audience engagement. This highlights a major issue in contemporary music that WordSong aims to address. During the 20th century, as many composers abandoned tonality for the far reaches of atonality and experimentalism, they expected audiences to come along. For the most part, they retreated and composers fled to the ivory tower. Now, it is common for composers to assume that if audiences don’t like their music, they just don’t get it; and it is equally common for audiences to feel that new music is way over their heads. Frazin and Schnauber, who wholeheartedly disavow this notion, seek out composers who are not afraid to engage in such a personal way with the audience. (Previous WordSong presentations have included composers Andy Vores, John McDonald, Dalit Warshaw, Herschel Garfein, Robert Merfeld, and Stan Charkey.)

One of the foundational objectives of WordSong  is to create a presentation format that, at its core, assumes listeners — all listeners — “get it”; that what they get is innate and not predicated on some sort of cultural sophistication. This argument finds its way into almost any discussion about WordSong with Frazin or Schnauber, but it can also lead down a bumpy philosophical road. Indeed, Frazin and Schnauber do not always see eye-to-eye on this. Frazin seems to have true faith in music as a universal language, with the emotional potential to transcend intellectual, and even cultural, barriers. Schnauber, on the other hand, disagrees with the capacity of even the most breathtaking Beethoven symphony to find relevance across cultures. “Music is no more a universal language than language is,” Schnauber says. However, when dealing within Western culture, there is agreement that even diverse audiences share a capacity to perceive emotional depth in music as well as text. This is why the first forums have focused on song settings instead of purely instrumental music. “People have strong opinions about words,” Frazin maintains, “It stimulates excellent discussion.”

It is now so commonplace to hear hype about the death of classical music that even musicians are beginning to believe it. Nearly every orchestra that is not steeped in traditional concert ritual is experimenting with new ways of attracting audiences. From multi-media presentations accompanying classic works to more Pops concerts (one orchestra even inserted bits of Coldplay into Beethoven’s Third Symphony), arts administrators are desperate. Frazin feels that the people making these decisions, not necessarily musicians themselves, are essentially saying, “Pop music is doing okay, let’s tap into that.” Frazin’s response? “We need to remind people of what the classical arts do best.” In an op-ed in The Boston Globe last year, he wrote about the arts as a cultural tool that “help[s] us imagine more fully our own sense of common humanity.”

Frazin and Schnauber have been approaching some orchestras with ideas for collaboration. Specifically, they see small forums being presented to patrons when deciding on new commissions. This would allow concertgoers and donors to experience the artistic process firsthand. Schnauber considers it a win-win situation for the orchestra, especially because the forums are inherently inexpensive. Also, by bringing musicians, composers, and audiences together in a more intimate environment, orchestras might forge a more meaningful relationship to the community.

Based on the positive response from audiences, the founders of WordSong are confident in the format’s appeal to larger arts organizations. Following the forums last Feburary, WordSong engaged both the Boston Arts Academy and the Boston Prep Charter School in outreach projects. Thanks to its uniquely multidisciplinary nature, the projects used the curriculum to expose students to composition. Additionally, WordSong took part in WGBH’s All Classical Festival in June, and presented a forum on Theodore Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz earlier in the year. In the future, the founders see the forums moving beyond song settings and into other associative experiences, including music based on painting and different pieces as the soundtrack to a short film. In each case, the audience is provided a hook with which to penetrate the inherent abstraction of music.

Ultimately, WordSong is about “re-convincing people of the merits of intuitive musical understanding.” All performers are familiar with the energy that is in the room during a great performance. That energy is equally alive during moments of spirited audience participation. After a forum in Rockport, Frazin was discussing poetry with a retired English professor. Later he reflected, “If you can get someone like this to talk about your music from the perspective life experience, you can get some cool stuff!”

On September 17, at Emmanuel College, will be the first forum of the new season. In collaboration with The Florestan Project, Frazin and Schnauber, along with Felicia Sandler and Nick Vines, will present four new settings of Wallace Stevens’ poem Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock, performed by baritone Aaron Engebreth and pianist Alison d’Amato. More information can be found in BMInt’s Upcoming Events.

Jonah Kappraff, trumpeter, studied at the Oberlin Conservatory and Boston University.  Currently, he freelances in the Boston area as well as maintaining a busy private teaching practice.

The opener, Chopin’s Introduction and Polonaise Brilliant (for piano and cello) was, by Ron Thomas’s charming admission, “…a light piece to hear but not so light to play, especially as one gets on in years.” The very busy and virtuosic Thomas was all over the fingerboard and beyond with scales, runs, arpeggios, etc. His bow arm produced plenty of power, and his mien was large and outgoing. His partner, pianist Reiko Aizawa, played with elegance and an almost balletic refinement, though she lacked some of the “refiner’s fire” called for in a partnership with a seasoned trouper like Thomas. According to the program notes by Barbara Leish, “…the piano is given the more virtuosic part.  … Throughout the piece the cello sings while the piano romps.” Without giving up any of her refinement, Aizawa needs to bump up the decibels when she is a chamber music partner. She was not abetted in her role by the somewhat dull parlor-sized Steinway. Often the utterances of the piano demand a prominence in this literature that they did not receive in this performance. Beethoven, for example, entitled his “cello sonatas” for “…piano with the accompaniment of the cello.”

Beethoven’s early “Violin Sonata in a minor, op 23” as the program calls it, is in the urtext entitled Sonata for Piano and Violin. In this outing with excellent violinist, Steven Copes, Aizawa again seemed overly deferential. Copes produced a brilliant and powerful tone which allowed one to forget the acoustical deficiencies of the performance space. Yet he stood well in front of the keyboard and rarely looked back at the pianist; the performance failed to gel as a collaboration of equals.

Thomas gave an interesting introduction to the final work, Schumann’s Piano Trio in F major op. 80, in which he discussed how the melodies were frequently tossed mid-phrase among the three players and that the harmonies sometimes changed out of synchrony with the tunes. While there was nothing at all Ivesian about this piece it certainly had much of Schumann’s shifting, mercurial quality. After a somewhat tentative first movement, the balding Thomas walked off the stage and returned with a different bow, complaining to the audience that the first bow had even less hair than he did.

The three remaining movements were played with great generosity and excitement by all three players. The BCMS brand is still to be trusted consistently to deliver enjoyable and stress-free chamber music performances. But this reviewer can’t help closing with an aside: no cellist ever re-hired a pianist because she wasn’t loud enough.

Joel Fan seems to be best known as a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. You don’t get tapped for a role like that without being an excellent musician, but until now I had no idea how fine a pianist Fan is. For the first half of the program, he took on major sonatas by two of the anniversary celebrants of this season, Chopin and Barber, and Fan showed himself to be a world class player.

We’ve heard many of the great pianists play Chopin’s “Funeral March” Sonata (No. 2, in B-flat Minor). Fan belongs in the company of the best. His approach to the first movement was surprisingly and gratifyingly free, conjuring up memories of some of the “Golden Age” pianists. I would have liked to hear that startling exposition repeat which is sometimes taken now but which Fan skipped. Aside from that, my notes are a catalog of virtues. Fan has a huge dynamic range and tremendous facility. He played the Scherzo with power and accuracy which almost matched my gold standard in this music, the 1929 Rachmaninov recording. The central section was very strongly and effectively contrasted. The March itself was dignified and very expressive without a trace of sentimentality. And in the surpassingly strange final Presto, Fan gave us the weirdest, and thus the best, performance I’ve ever heard, with blurry articulation and heavy use of the pedal producing a chilling effect.

This Barber skeptic still has a good time with the composer’s only Piano Sonata, perhaps because it shows such strong influence of Prokofiev’s wonderful “War Sonatas.” Fan tore into the opening movement with great energy and a tone that verged on steel but never clanged. He played the entire sonata with the same kind of concentration and virtuosity, especially impressing with the reckless speed of the finale that never led to any loss of control. I think I would like this finale better if it weren’t labeled “Fuga”; it’s a poorly constructed and confusing fugue — but a marvelous toccata.

Daron Hagen’s Seven Last Words was written for piano left hand and orchestra and was first performed by Gary Graffman. After Fan played the work with Platt and the Wisconsin Philharmonic, Platt asked the composer to prepare a chamber version that could be played at Maverick, and it was premiered at this concert. Apparently mine is a minority opinion on this work, which has drawn wide praise. I don’t doubt the composer’s sincerity, but I heard a progression of unimaginative musical materials, including at one point a single note drone played in turn by string instruments and treated as the main material.

The orchestral scoring, or as much of it as survives in this reduction, is very impressive, and provides the main interest. But without distinctive themes, this half-hour piece winds up sounding to me like movie music, designed to reinforce impressions rather than to produce them. Aside from what sounded like quotes from Shostakovich’s Trio and Ravel’s Concerto for Left Hand, this work is not enough substance and too much surface.

I don’t suppose you could ask for a better performance. What I could hear of Fan’s playing (he was sometimes obliterated by brass and percussion, which might have been the point) sounded as fervent as his solo playing. Platt coordinated the ensemble with his usual skill, and the individual players were splendid. The piece just didn’t melt this curmudgeon’s heart the way it was obviously designed to.

Leslie Gerber lives in Woodstock, New York. He has been reviewing professionally since 1966, for such venues as Performance Today, Fanfare, and Amazon.com. He also publishes the Parnassus Records label.

Susanna Mälkki leads the BSO (Hilary-Scott)

Both Felix Mendelssohn’s Concerto in D minor for violin, piano, and strings and his Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Op. 21, composed when he was but 13 and 17, were given dashing interpretations by conductor Susanna Mälkki—the former with violinist Joshua Bell, and pianist Jeremy Denk in the Tanglewood Shed on August 21, 2010. Revealing the brilliant portent of Mendelssohn’s childhood and giving a critical perspective of his growth into a worthy Beethoven successor came in the second half of the program, dedicated to Beethoven’s music. Here, Bell’s performance of Beethoven’s Romance No. 2 in F major, Op. 50 for violin and orchestra, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 in B-flat, Op. 60, offered striking contrasts in substance and mood.

We witnessed in this concert both that wild tempos in the hands of virtuoso players can stir excitement in the absence of great musical substance and that frustration can come when a great orchestra, accustomed to male conductors, faces a woman on its podium. Along with the revelations and discoveries in this provocative concert came interesting questions of orchestral professionalism and leadership that bumped against the patriarchal values constraining the careers of female conductors.

Susanna Mälkki, substituting for James Levine, could hardly appear more different than the BSO’s recuperating music director. Where he is confined to his chair, limited in the range of his gestures, she is a lithe, graceful, youthful presence on the podium. Where he is cerebral, preferring subtle gestures of the baton, she is “a conducting animal” of the Gustavo Dudamel species who expresses ideas and emotions with her fingers, hands, face, hair, torso, and legs. Where he is ambiguous in his directions, pulling from each individual player the best that they think he wants from them, she is vigorously direct and steadfast, even in the face of active resistance to her tempos and dynamic indications. Where he is a male conductor at the pinnacle of his career (notwithstanding his physical infirmities), she is a modern woman on her way up, unencumbered by anything but the preferences and prejudices of a tradition-ridden profession.

The daring acceleration with which Mälkki addressed the ethereal beginning of Midsummer Night’s Dream appeared to confuse the orchestra, which held back. She increased the amplitude of her hand and arm movements. Still they held back. She assumed a military posture, employing strong vertical indications to signal the downbeats of the 2/4 meter and pulling the second-beat accents in the succeeding passage with dramatic up-lifts. The beat couldn’t have been clearer, but the orchestra was flaccid, and the quality of the attacks, especially in the strings, was ragged.

The dense and shifting orchestral colors emerged convincingly in response to Mälkki’s confident sweeps of her arms and delicate conjuring of her fingers, however, as the initial section of the work developed through a splendid rallentendo, approaching its penultimate D-minor cadence before returning to the shimmering tonalities of the beginning. This left no doubt that the BSO could, and would, play for her if it wanted to.

An unexpected auditory event presented itself next, signaling that for all her expertise in contemporary music (Mälkki leads the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris), the conductor respected what Mendelssohn had in mind with regard to the orchestra of his day. BSO third trombone Douglas Yeo sounded his ophicleide, the unfamiliar predecessor of the modern orchestral tuba that is usually cast in this piece. It was as if a fat French horn had descended down an octave and a half below its low F. Yeo’s tone was focused, resonant, a bit thin for the tuba taste, but exquisitely blended with the horns and contrabasses, its slightly nasal quality adding just the right amount of distinction to this important, exposed melody. It was a marvelous touch, evoking the zany spirit of the “play within a play” of Shakespeare’s comedy.

Mendelssohn then explored his developing identity as a romantic in the lovely harmonies that suffused the final passages, featuring another vivace, now appropriately controlled in the strings, that brought in the woodwinds, first in F minor, then on a downward harmonic escalator that flowed in magic thirds through D minor to Bb major to G minor and after a tentative C 7th, to an F-minor cadence. In the end, an affecting, sad, descending scale was repeated by the first violins and then the horns before the woodwinds brought the piece to a soft and satisfying close. It was a stirring performance, to which the audience responded with appropriate enthusiasm. The back-story seemed not to matter. How lovely it is that music is so ephemeral!

Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk brought virtuoso technique to bear on the pubertal pretensions of the Mendelssohn Concerto for violin and piano. The opening of this adolescent adventure sounded as if it came from the composer’s counterpoint class. The “orchestra” here was more a figure of speech than a foundational platform, offering chords and comments beneath the serviceable channeling of a three-note phrase into canonical and fugal configurations. Bach it was not. But Bell and Denk pulled every available emotion from the melodies, such as they were, emphasizing shifting tonalities with graceful dynamics and velvety legatos.

Then came fun!  Mälkki, Bell, and Denk whizzed around several octaves’ worth of scales, the two instrumentalists cuing one another with a subtlety that approached telepathy on chiseled phrases, stunning volume shifts, and effortless streaks of unisons and thirds. If the exchanges between the violin and piano seemed absurdly literal and the thematic development sounded primitive, what the piece lacked in structure it gained in breathtaking performance. Back-to-back short cadenzas culminated in a lyrical rubato section for solo piano before the breakneck tempo reappeared. Mendelssohn and the violinist friend for whom the piece was written obviously had enjoyed this chase, stirring a quick quotation of Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca” (the popular last movement of his Piano Sonata No. 11) into a recapitulation of the 3-note motif (D, E, A) from the first movement.

Here, Mälkki held it all together, and the orchestra played gamely along. Now there was no obvious backing and filling. The crowd loved it, and many smiles were shared in the intermission that followed.

The Beethoven Romance was a sweet affair, its rhythms and accents guided gently by Mälkki’s hands, arms, and torso. Bell brought a balletic expressivity and his own subtle movements to the arching melodies with controlled nuances and a warm temperament reminiscent of Isaac Stern. Despite the searching, forward-looking brilliance of his original cadenzas, there was not a shred of show or pretence. Here was a serious performance of mature music, as it was meant to be.

The Fourth Symphony began with a sense of mystery. Mälkki took the opening tempo very slowly, giving emphasis to the bold harmonic transits — those magic thirds again! — from Bb minor to Gb to Eb, in which Beethoven pointed the way through Mendelssohn and Schumann to Wagner and 20th-century composition.

The drama was enhanced by Mälkki’s impressively articulated accents. In no sense did the use of her body appear to be disingenuous or inappropriately sensuous, although her femininity could not be denied. This was music making of a very high order, making effective use of a fine repertory of expressive tools.

An exaggerated fortissimo to the first movement allegro gave still more excitement, with blasts of tympani and bursts of trumpets. The mood calmed, and Mälkki focused on the inner voices from the woodwinds. Like a restrained ballerina, she summoned from principal flute Elizabeth Rowe a high and shining solo. Shakes of Mälkki’s hair added a certain swing to Beethoven’s rhythmic syncopations.

Now the musicians were playing absolutely responsively, with mighty crescendos, gossamer string and woodwind pianos, and impressively controlled accents from Timothy Genis’s tympani and the two matched flugelhorns. The dotted-eighth rhythms were signaled by Mälkki’s subtle counterpunches and torso-flicks, yielding inescapably to satisfying orchestral synchrony. Sustaining the emphasis on tonal variety, she hushed the violins with a quick application of finger to lip. Down they came, with alacrity. She urged Beethoven’s sfortzandos with total-body pulses, in which she pushed forward with her hands while arching slightly backward. At the same time, her athleticism was restrained both by her relentless focus on the task at hand and by her costume, a modest tuxedo with a simple leather collar. The music was her focus.

The last movement was a rapid tour de force, wild, and yet controlled. In the swirling violins over tremolo contrabasses, the punctuation of diatonic harmonies with diminished chords, and the buildup to the crashing Bb ending, the full palette of Beethoven’s tortured emotions was exposed. Mälkki had led us through this transit from childhood through adulthood in what felt like minutes. It was intense, enthralling, and revelatory.

Your reviewer searched in vain through Gunther Schuller’s 1997 magnum opus, The Compleat Conductor, for any reference to female conductors. But Schuller’s courageous, indeed relentless, insistence that no one has the right to fiddle with the composer’s intentions, led him to adroit and powerful criticism of such conducting icons as Tanglewood favorite Leonard Bernstein. Schuller documents that although Bernstein himself talked and wrote that music came first, he violated the principle in obvious ways when he was standing on the podium. Schuller underlines a set of paramount conducting values that include honesty, expressivity, respect, and thoughtful reflection.

In this spirit, after a concert like this one, one is constrained to ask these questions:

• Why should this professional guild be nearly exclusively male?

• Could Mälkki’s feminine status have affected the orchestra’s initial resistance?

• Was it daunting to the players and the audience?

• Was her confidence a product of Finland’s more adroit fulfillment of the promise of women musicians that ours?

• If we disagree with her tempos and her interpretations, do we criticize them more harshly because she is a woman?

• Could Mälkki possibly be unaware and unaffected by Marin Alsop’s cruel and public mistreatment by the Baltimore Symphony’s players, even after the Board hired her, and her earlier unpleasant encounter on the Tanglewood podium (that this reviewer witnessed)?

Your reviewer has no answers to these questions except to say that sexism is alive and well in the world of music and that the time has come for female conductors to take their rightful places on the podiums of the world’s greatest orchestras, including this one. Yet another 19th-century European prejudicial tradition should yield to contemporary respect for human rights and gender equality, and to the creative power of cultural diversity.

Note: BMInt issued retraction of sexism charges here.

Eli H. Newberger studied music theory and reviewed classical music for the Yale Daily News. Performing music, he wrote in “Medicine of the Tuba” in Doctors Afield (Yale University Press, 1999), helps him to care. That chapter and other writings on music and medicine may be found on his website, here.

Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role of Glimmerglass Opera's 2010 U.S. professionally staged premiere of Tolomeo. Photo: Claire McAdams/Glimmerglass Opera

This 2010 season at Glimmerglass, by and large an enjoyable one, marked the fifth and last summer of Michael MacLeod’s regime. The financial profligacy of the previous administration left MacLeod — given the economic downturn — in a largely caretaking role vis-à-vis the company’s legacy. He did curate two fascinating thematic summers devoted to Orphic operas (2007) and “Shakespeare/Non-Shakespeare” (2008). The incoming team of Francesca Zambello and Linda Jackson will surely shake things up; one welcome change from these last two summers will be women directors returning to the scene. That the four operas proved pleasurable is a tribute to former Director of Casting and Artistic Operations Donald Marrazzo, sadly let go along with other staff at Christmas, soon after he completed lead casting and selection of Young Artists. Credit also accrues to Donald Eastman, who designed a reasonably attractive set flexible enough to suit four very different works.

Winton Dean cites 1728′s Tolomeo (August 13) as having the weakest of Nicola Francesco Haym’s libretti for Handel, citing the sham pastoral setting (all of the actants are, after all, royalty) that occasions multiple nature-simile arias unconnected to the plot and adding to its stasis — plus the fact that the plot’s main motor, Tolomeo and Alessandro’s manipulative mother Cleopatra III, remains offstage. Quite a few arias fail to add to our knowledge of the characters singing them, and the composer does not seem even to have attempted creating any changing psychological portraits, as with Cleopatra, Alcina or Grimoaldo.

The opera’s North American professional stage première was undermined by Chas Rader-Shieber’s annoying, derivative, grotesquely supernumerary-marred staging. We began with the shipwrecked pharaonic heir gazing into a fishbowl and a huge plastic swordfish (mascot stolen from an ‘80s Lincoln Center mounting of Comedy of Errors) flown in for laughs from those who would rather not be tasked with listening to the music or words. Rader-Shieber basically mocked the plot, rendering the improbable yet impassioned trivial and smug.

Musically however, things went swimmingly, with Christian Curnyn a welcome, stylish debutant in the pit. Former Young Artists Anthony Roth Costanzo and Joélle Harvey — last year’s stellar Sorceress and Belinda in Dido and Aeneas — returned in triumph to the strikingly demanding Senesino and Cuzzoni roles. Both acted and sang up a storm. Roth Costanzo’s keen musico-dramatic intelligence and gift for sustained line made “Stille amare” the season’s high point; Harvey dazzled physically and vocally as his beloved Seleuce. Almost on their level was Julie Boulianne (Elisa, the role Faustina created). A delightful actress despite horrific costuming and a predictable punk/goth “bad girl” concept, Boulianne showed more metal in her tone than in previous local outings. Karin Mushegain brought earnest demeanor and a nice vocal quality to Alessandro, Tolomeo’s brother and rival; baritone Steven LaBrie, also saddled with a parodic costume, fared solidly as the tyrant Araspe. At the end, after three (3) drops of petals — please may I never see this device again — everyone onstage took off some of their clothes, tra-la.

That evening’s Tender Land shared with Tolomeo the brilliantly calibrated lighting of Robert Wierzel. Aaron Copland’s only full-length opera was an inspired choice for a production utilizing only Young Artists. A rural parable of the price of paranoia (with quite sophisticated and very beautiful music) it couldn’t be more timely in a nation beset with xenophobic angst. Rejected for television due to McCarthy era Red-baiting, the work premiered at New York City Opera in 1953 under Thomas Schippers.

L to R: Rebecca Jo Loeb as Beth Moss, Lindsay Russell as Laurie Moss and Stephanie Foley Davis as Ma Moss in Glimmerglass Opera's 2010 production of The Tender Land. Photo: Claire McAdams/Glimmerglass Opera.

Tazewell Thompson directed his actors well; he got the Copland estate to agree to bringing the whole ensemble onstage for Act One’s overwhelming quintet finale, “The Promise of Living.” This furnished a striking image but betrayed the work’s basic structure: a social act between two deeply intimate acts. Still, it was quite a moving evening, thanks to wonderful, unaffected portrayals of the leading character (Laurie Moss, a farm girl about to graduate from high school and her mother Ma Moss) by Lindsay Russell and Stephanie Foley Davis. Both combined eloquent simplicity with healthy, individual sounds. As Martin, Laurie’s itinerant suitor, Andrew Stenson sang with lyrical sensitivity and crisp diction; he looked too young for the role (surely Martin’s desire to settle marks him as older than Laurie) as did the solid bass Joseph Barron as the grandfather, created by Norman Treigle and requiring more telling low notes than Barron yet commands. As Martin’s devil-may-care buddy Top, baritone Mark Diamond showed some star wattage. Stewart Robertson led with firm control but perhaps too persistently slowly.

The remaining two shows fell to Music Director David Angus. He did better with an effervescent Nozze di Figaro (August 15 ) than with the next day’s decent but hardly “festival” Tosca, though the reduced orchestra played capably enough save for the string colloquy underlying the Cavaradossi/Jailor exchange. One wondered why MacLeod had chosen to mount Tosca in the first place. Lise Lindstrom has made striking Met appearances as Turandot, but her bright, steely tones, though healthy and reliable at the top, did little to illuminate the character’s words or emotions. Adam Diegel, returning next season as Don José, cut a nice figure and took care with dynamics, but to my ears the timbre turns adenoidal when pressure was (inevitably) applied. Lester Lynch tended to bluster and roar as Scarpia, making an undeniable visceral impact and occasionally showing a fine legato that his co-stars lacked. Robert Kerr made a notably strong, uncaricatured Sacristan. Ned Canty staged a logical 1930s “Poverty Row” Tosca, though having a female secretary onstage during stretches of Act II struck me as an interesting failed notion.

Leon Major’s Nozze di Figaro was also transposed, seemingly to an Edwardian Britain (a favored Glimmerglass topos) in which the droit du seigneur was recent news. But the opera worked, due to a fine cast and inventive, well-timed blocking; my main objection was to the omnipresence onstage of Basilio, who witnessed virtually everything, to no evident gain.

Patrick Carfizzi in the title role of Glimmerglass Opera's 2010 production of The Marriage of Figaro. Photo: Karli Cadel/Glimmerglass Opera.

Patrick Carfizzi, often the Met’s Antonio, showed how very well he could sing as Figaro; thoughtful recits, too. Mostly, Lyubov Petrova made an enchanting Freni-like Susanna, looking and sounding terrific; but she nearly spoiled matters by inserting tinkly laughs and little ad-libs after virtually every line: is this some misguided Russian notion of Mozart style? Caitlin Lynch’s handsome Countess had a few brittle moments but showed a lovely soprano with good musical instincts. Mark Schnaible (Count) gave a sound performance but needed better Italian. French import Aurhelia Varak looked adorable but sounded chalky as Cherubino, surely a part easily cast from any North American conservatory. Among the Young Artists, Courtney McKeown and Kerr registered positively as Marcellina and Antonio; pure-toned Haeran Hong charmed as Barbarina. Jonathan Kelly played lively, apt continuo, but his instrument’s tone grated. Angus gave us a fine overture, sound pacing and — welcomely —  lots of appoggiature and decorations.

David Shengold, a Philadelphia-based art critic, writes for Opera News, Opera (UK), Opéra Magazine (France), Musical America Online, Playbill, and Time Out New York among many other venues.

Dawn Upshaw performs with conductor Ludovic Morlot (Photo by Hilary Scott)

Inspired by the culture of France and the Jewish diasporas, the Boston Symphony Orchestra began its concert of August 20 with Mozart’s dense and compact Symphony No. 31 in D (“Paris”) and proceeded through two moving works for soprano solo, Devrath Joseph Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne and Osvaldo Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra, to Ravel’s coloristic concerto for orchestra, Ma Mere l’Oye (“Mother Goose Suite”, in the complete version). Dawn Upshaw’s modest stage manner belied her powerful emotionality and vocal virtuosity, bringing tears to the eyes and cheers to the heart in her knowing evocations of love and loss, and the charming intimacies of country life. Ludovic Morlot treated the stirring Mozart meters with a startling economy of movement, but embraced the subsequent romantic works with passionate spirit and expansive gesture.

The allegro first movement of the Mozart was sprung like a clock, sounding regular alarms of shooting octaves from the highest to the lowest strings (played with remarkable precision by the contrabass ensemble, led on this night by Lawrence Wolfe), but controlled both by brisk, steady rhythms and the fierce logic of a gorgeous counterpoint. Merlot’s subtle cues pulled out the inner lines; he emphasized the shape of the longer phrases by bringing up the volume of the two matched, mellow flugelhorns.

In the second movement, the 3/4 andante under Morlot’s baton became not so much a walking meter than a waltz. A striking series of four-measure exchanges unfolded between the strings and the woodwinds, telescoping to two- and then one-measure conversations. In but a few moments, the Shed was transformed to the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. Keisuke Wakao’s oboe and Elizabeth Rowe’s flute sang together as one, swept away. When Mozart received this commission, what could the young fellow from Vienna have been thinking about the predilections of the French?

With its rapid piano strings and sudden forte bursts from the flugelhorns at the start of the third movement, Mozart, in 1778, anticipated Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony by 13 years. (Whether or not Papa Haydn was a thief is not the issue. What great composer stands alone?) Here, one could perceive the compositional sources of Mozart’s titanic influence: his ability to make melody magic of every short succession of notes, to propel rhythmic ambiguities through counterpoint, to subtly push inner lines into overlapping phrases of tensile strength, and to fearlessly assert complex rhythms, bold dynamics, and heady harmonic transitions.

When, at last, the splendidly synchronized arpeggios in the flugelhorns returned harmonic tonality convincingly to D major, there was delight, satisfaction, and even relief. Here was 250-year-old music brought to contemporary relevance by a sympathetic conductor in front of a splendid orchestra.

Dawn Upshaw appeared to a warm welcome in a flowing, turquoise jacket and matching scarf over slim, black pants. Her easy manner and lack of pretension captured beautifully the simple eloquence of the folk lyrics in the Canteloube songs. But her singing! This was world-class stuff, in range, color, timbre, and daring. Upshaw’s voice spans the soprano range with an ermine warmth. Without much ado, she adds depth and variety apposite to the lyrics: here an edge of laughter, there the verge of tears, and in the Sprechstimme that the Canteloube calls for, an unaffected, highly inflected human voice, and then a stunning emulation of a cuckoo’s cries. What force she adds for expressive nuance appears as the vocal equivalent of burnished wood, a timbre that falls somewhere between the bass clarinet and the oboe. If there were a perfect singer for the huge emotional range called for in the works of in this evening’s program, it was surely she.

The “Spinning Girl” in the first song, when asked for a kiss, gives two, and whirls through a vocal gyre from low E to high A. The repeated nonsense refrain, “Ti lirou . . . la la diri” was elevated by twinkles of flute and piccolo, capturing in form and fancy the dizzying delight of first love.

Who writes songs like “Run, Dog, Run!” these days? This little stunner would arguably have better served the climax of the 1995 movie, Babe, than the final movement of Saint-Saens’ “Organ” Symphony. Absent the colossal impact, “Run, Dog, Run!” shimmered equally in animation and charm. Upshaw’s portrayal of the drama of a runaway cow, a shepherd, and a terrier, in swoops and yells and guttural barks, leapt over the rushing winds and dashing strings of Canteloube’s orchestration.

With such guidance, this doggie hardly needed a password to help him with his task. (Musicological trivia question: What was the password that Babe the pig used to herd the sheep into the corral, enabling him to win the grand prize of Scotland’s herding contest, not by being mean, but by asking nicely? Answer, cued to the piano arpeggios that herald that first, crashing organ chord, uttered gently: “Ba, Ram, You!” This was arguably the finest moment of French movie music since Wilhelmenia Fernandez sang Alfredo Catalani’s “Aria from ‘La Wally’” in the 1981 cult classic, Diva.)

The repeated comforting phrases of “Lullaby,” woven into exquisite, soft woodwind textures, evoked maternal frustration as well as love. Finally, the baby drifted off to sleep, after Upshaw observed tenderly, “It is coming at last, the lazy one! It is coming, here it is! And the baby is going to sleep… Ah!” After a song about putting a baby to bed, there came another about getting somebody special out of bed. Only after Pierre returned from multiple trips to the fair with Margaret’s “chemise, and the petticoat, and the laced bodice, and her kerchief, and her panties and her hat,” would she consider arising for the day. A delicious mix of harmony captured Pierre’s complex emotions. Circling around A-minor tonalities, his mood abruptly changed when Margaret at last exclaimed, “How pretty I look!” The song quickly resolved in a bright A-major cadence when, finally, “Margaret got out of bed!” Poor Pierre! Happy Pierre! Enabling Pierre!

“The Cuckoo” sang from a tree “in bloom, all red” to music that reflected a fabulous metaphor: “Certainly if all the cuckoos were to wear little bells, they would sound like five hundred trumpets.” Here the trumpets surely shone, with lots of chirpy staccatos, dissonant cackles, and at the end repeated calls of “cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!” Upshaw’s sense of humor came across especially pleasingly in her understatement of the over-the-top text.

The scene turned darker and more serious in the first of the Golijov songs, a lullaby, translated to and sung in the Yiddish of his forebears, with an unusual musical structure: soprano solo, soprano with orchestra, and orchestra solo. Upshaw began the song a cappella, totally exposed and precisely in tune, with the words, “Close your eyes and you shall go to that sweet land all dreamers know.” The subtle orchestral accompaniment lay down simple harmonies on a carpet of thick woodwind textures, with echoes of the vocal line sounding in the alto flute, contrabass clarinet, and violas. A romantic harmonic progression (C major, A major, E major, repeated again and again) underpinned this knowing expression of maternal comfort.

Then tension mounted with a keening melody, voiced in scalloping circles by the first violins, counterpoised by a rapid pizzicato passage in the contrabasses and bursts of linear lines in minor keys in the mid-range of the French horns. Their harsh tritones resolved to perfect fourths in a sudden, minor cadence. After the sweetness and peace of the lullaby came an augury of tragedy.

Yiddish changed to Spanish in the following affecting song, “Moon, Colorless.” Once again, Upshaw started a cappella, sounding a stunning, perfect E. Joined by strings in an expansive, rubato treatment of Rosalia de Castro’s poem, she asked the moon “If you know where Death has her dark mansion, tell her to take my body and soul together to a place where I won’t be remembered. …” Following a sweeping lament by Associate Concertmaster Tamara Smirnova, alternating pizzicato phrases between the cellos and the contrabasses underpinned a complex soprano melody that rose through Latin American and Klezmer inflections to a high Bb before resolving on the major third of a clear C-major chord. The sad ambiguity of human hopelessness in the face of a glowing heavenly body was resolved with optimism. Only through music can mixed feelings such as these be expressed, and shared, so deeply.

Two spare poems by Emily Dickinson closed this portion of the program. These, too, were songs of love and the transitory nature of human existence, embedding intimate feelings in soaring celestial images. These phrases could not have been better suited to Golijov’s and Upshaw’s artistry. His music was among his best: straightforward, simply and carefully worked, with clear voicings of the instruments (again with emphasis on texture, enriched by high contrabassoon and alto flute), accessible harmonies, and honest, heartfelt emotion. Her singing was thoughtful, nuanced, and moving.

Maestro Morlot’s “Mother Goose” focused on the kaleidoscopic qualities of Ravel’s orchestration. This is really a concerto for orchestra, and star turns were taken by oboe Keisuke Wakao, summoning rapid changes of mood and leading us up a staircase of romantic harmonies, and by piccolo Cynthia Myers, principal clarinet William Hudgins, and contrabassoon Gregg Henegar, who handed off a long melody that developed from a muscular, low Gb to the splendid lower register of Elizabeth Rowe’s flute. Lush, muted violins re-introduced Wakao’s oboe and gave emphasis to the honeyed quality of Robert Sheena’s English horn that built and ultimately directed all the woodwinds to a glorious section chorale.

After three statements of a four-pulse birdcall, played with charm by one of the percussionists alongside companionable chirping from the piccolo, the muted strings and oboe returned. Jessica Zhou’s harp, along with the celesta and xylophone gave sizzle and sparkle to the “Fairy Garden” movement, with echoes of its ethereal, pentatonic tonalities whispered by the alto flute and the piccolo. A powerful crescendo propagated shards of melody across the woodwinds and brass to a stirring restatement of the principal theme from the “Empress of the Pagoda” movement, punctuated resoundingly by horns and gong.

Your reviewer’s notes at this point in the Ravel include the phrase, “totally unlike listening to a recording, the shadings, the tonal variety!” This was one of those moments to rethink one’s listening habits. Really to appreciate music, there’s no substitute for listening to the real thing in live performance.  In this deeply satisfying evening, Ludovic Morlot, Dawn Upshaw, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave us a magisterial alternative to the CD, the MP3 or any media player.

Eli H. Newberger studied music theory and reviewed classical music for the Yale Daily News. Performing music, he wrote in “Medicine of the Tuba” in Doctors Afield (Yale University Press, 1999), helps him to care. That chapter and other writings on music and medicine may be found on his website, here.

Fred Hersch has been a major name on the jazz scene for quite a few years. His medical odyssey has not obscured the main reason he is so well known — for the quality of his playing. In a solo concert at Maverick on Saturday evening, Hersch immediately impressed me with his sound. He plays with a richness, beauty, and variety of tonal quality that are beyond the abilities of most classical pianists these days. That beauty of sound sustained me through a fairly long program that I found otherwise only partially rewarding.

Hersch definitely has his own style, although it does seem to derive in part from that of Bill Evans. He played music by a variety of composers, including Monk, Golson, Gershwin, Wilder, Strayhorn and others, and made those tunes difficult to tell from his own original compositions. There’s nothing wrong with that. Monk made the standards he played sound like Monk originals. He also plays with impressive command, including sophisticated harmonies and rhythms and even considerable counterpoint. The problem for one listener is that he makes everything sound so romantic and pretty that after a while I was wishing he would bang his elbow on the keys, or do something ill mannered. Not a chance. In the end, it was a lovely evening but too lovely for my taste. This isn’t really a value judgment, though. Hersch does what he wants to do extremely well and most of his listeners obviously love it.

The Ebène Quartet, competing with heavy rain, immediately made a strong impression with its opening work, Mozart’s Divertimento in D, K. 136. The impression it made on me was not favorable. After its cellist told us that this was simple music, the quartet proceeded to load it down with expressive details, including sentimentalization in the first movement’s development, a huge ritard defacing the Andante, and overdone dynamics in the concluding Presto. This is early Mozart, not late Beethoven, and I felt the music sank under the weight of the performers’ emphases.

I had somewhat similar reservations about the approach to Debussy’s String Quartet. The piece seems to be overplayed these days, so I can understand why an ensemble might want to do things differently than the norm. But the way detailing was applied to this relatively gentle music seemed overdone and precious. The second movement was overemphasized, the third not just “doucement expressif” but over-sweetened. There is no doubt the Ebène Quartet was doing what it wanted, and the group’s coordination was impressive, but I was not happy with the results.

After these interpretive miscalculations, one might have worried about what the group was going to do with — or to — Beethoven’s Quartet in C Sharp Minor, Op. 131, music as great as anything in the string quartet literature. But here, the extreme expressive and technical demands of the music apparently dispersed the group’s impulses to exaggerate things. The extremely expressive quality of the slow fugue that opens this work was entirely appropriate (Beethoven wrote “molto espressivo” and meant it). In other parts of the music, the exaggerations were the composer’s, faithfully executed by the musicians. The huge sound that began the finale might have seemed too much for most music, but not for this piece. This powerful interpretation of Beethoven’s masterpiece made up for problems in the first half of the concert and then some. I hope the Ebène Quartet learns to play more modest music more modestly, but it does know how to take on the big ones.

Leslie Gerber lives in Woodstock, New York. He has been reviewing professionally since 1966, for such venues as Performance Today, Fanfare, and Amazon.com. He also publishes the Parnassus Records label.

Maudsley's outdoor concert setting. (BMInt staff photo)

American Century Music’s Artistic Director Scott Parkman is on a voyage of discovery: to uncover in dusty archives those works by American composers of the first half of the 20th century that are deserving of revival by his young musician-recruits. ACM’s local concerts have so far been in unconventional spaces. This summer a series of three took place in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library. On Sunday, August 21, a decommissioned barn at Newburyport’s Maudsley Center for the Arts was the venue. The concert by a quintet of excellent Boston freelancers fielded by Parkmann was, in fact, the first classical event presented there.

Originally intended to be outside in a concrete-walled patio, because of rain the performance  was moved into an acoustically much more appropriate though rather long and height-challenged 1920s barn. Set up with green plastic tables and chairs for a Pops-style food service, the room had rather pleasant acoustics, since  it opened above the ceiling framing into a voluminous wooden truss space. Perhaps because this was the first classical music concert presented by The Maudsley, there was often some commotion in the background, such as movement of the food-service volunteers over the concrete floors and conversations just outside.

The performances by a string quartet of Gabriela Diaz and Omar Chen Guey, violins, Frank Shaw, viola, and Alexei Gonzales, cello were excellent for an ad hoc assemblage. Samuel Barber’s String Quartet, op. 11 got a stirring reading. The first movement’s pulse never wavered, thanks to the dramatic leadership of first violinist Diaz, and the famous adagio was emotive without being maudlin, due both to her restraint and the unanimity of the ensemble.

Flautist Jessi Rosinksi joined the quartet for Walter Piston’s Quintet for Flute and Strings, a “wheels within wheels” neoclassical construct written for Doriot Anthony (later Dwyer) in 1942. It has a certain reflexive spikiness and a Copland-esque wrong-note lyricism. While the five players could not always provide the dramatic accents and turn-on-a-dime risk-taking of an established ensemble, their playing did show an estimable investment in the unfamiliar and difficult-to-pull-off music.

The Nocturne and Scherzo for Flute and String Quartet of Arthur Foote is a lovely trifle of gossamer exoticism without any disturbing storm or stress. We’d like to hear it again. Gershwin’s familiar and much-transcribed Lullaby for String Quartet has no real destination, though the performance lent it very pleasant barcarolle-like quality (even though the piece is in 4) and a sense of a pleasant, reposeful journey. The closer was a broad and brio performance of Ives’s String Quartet no. 1 “A Revival Service,” a veritable plum pudding of hymns that deserved and received a grateful Amen.

Lee Eiseman is publisher of Boston Musical Intelligencer.