Date: Fri 01-Sep-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Illustration: C

Location: A-11

Quick Words:

Pops-Tanglewoods-Shaham-Views

Full Text:

Classical Music Views-

The BSO & Chistoph Eschenbach: An Incongruous Combination

(no photo, as usual)

By Vadim Prokharov

The Boston Symphony Orchestra; Christoph Eschenbach, conductor; Gil Shaham,

violin. Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass., August 25.

It is always amazing to listen to (and to watch) how an orchestra changes its

sound and ability to convey a composer's intentions while led by visiting

conductors. They come and go, some staying longer, some shorter. Some produce

an unforgettable impact on the orchestra, while others smother its freedom,

arousing only resistance.

A dozen conductors led the Boston Symphony Orchestra this summer in

Tanglewood. The honor to end the summer season on August 25 fell to Christoph

Eschenbach, the Houston Symphony and Ravinia Festival's music director. The

honor was his. The Boston Symphony, however, did not sound or look honored.

Some conductors think simple: get together good musicians and give them

freedom (of course, organized by a conductor; sort of improvisation staged

before a performance). Not Christoph Eschenbach. His doggedly prolix

gesticulation and old-fashioned dramatism suffocated the musicians. The

orchestra's freedom of expression, the balance of its sound and simply its

togetherness, were overrun by the conductor's pressure.

And if the "overture" to the concert, Phaethon, by American composer

Christopher Rouse (the idea of the piece is drawn from the Greek myth about

Helios and his son Phaethon), managed to withstand the gravity of Mr

Eschenbach's conducting, Max Bruch's Fantasia on Scottish folk melodies for

the violin, with orchestra and harp (with Gil Shaham as soloist) and

Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony never took off the ground. As soon as the

orchestra had taxied and tried to acquire the potential energy for the

monolithic soaring, the density of the podium personality's aura would have

the musicians pressed to the ground again.

Mr Eschenbach's hands yelled and yelled unceasingly. His theatrical turns from

the violas to the violins and the right-hand's convulsions (which presumably

stood for vibrato) took all the attention from the compositions. This

theatricality logically turned into unnaturalness of tempos and transitions as

well as the demolition of the dynamic structure.

The Boston Symphony may have succumbed to the conductor's pressure, but not

Gil Shaham. The young violinist displayed the mature synergy of force and

subtlety, triumphing over the conductor's stylistic blunders.

The conductor did not learn from Mr Shaham. In the Tchaikovsky, Mr Eschenbach

turned the composer's suffering into slobbering; the music's dramatism into

melodramatic pseudo-significance. Both did not suit the Boston Symphony at

all.