Renée Fleming, James Levine, and the Boston Symphony in Berg, Richard Strauss, and Mahler, by Michael Miller
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Friday, February 12, 8 p.m.
James Levine, conductor
Renée Fleming, soprano
Berg, Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6
Strauss, Four Last Songs
Mahler, Symphony No. 4
Before getting into the program in detail, it's worth noting that here again the BSO and New York Philharmonic programs overlap. While Levine in the Berg Three Pieces is returning to repertoire with which he has been closely associated for many years—music inspired by the composer of the main work, Gustav Mahler—Gilbert approached the same work as part of his ongoing exploration of the Second Vienna School, which has enriched his programming throughout the year, and, I'm sure, will continue throughout his career.
Often, hearing the BSO at Symphony Hall is a spatial experience. Berg's fragmented scoring of longer sections among disparate choirs of the orchestra created an almost eerie effect of coherent music dismembered and spread over a vast space. Levine's fairly deliberate tempi made sure that there was plenty of space and atmosphere around the every phrase, chord, attack, or stroke of the percussion. The detail in the percussion in opening bars was astonishing, and the performance continued in this way throughout. An unerring sense of the longer and shorter shape of the music was combined with meticulous attention to sonorities and textures, and all this was enhanced by the superb playing of the Boston Symphony. We were constantly aware of its Mahlerian origins as well as of everything that was different, everything that was most characteristically Berg, for example his ferocious vivisection of a military march in the final piece.
