Susanna Mälkki conducts stirring Tanglewood performance featuring the young musicians

A quick search online, using Boston Symphony’s performance history database, yielded some interesting facts related to Sunday’s afternoon performance. It was the first time that the “Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert”, the culmination of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra (TMCO) summer training activities, coincided with the last symphonic performance of the Tanglewood Festival. While Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has consistently been scheduled for the end-of-season performance, it has always featured the BSO as players, not the young TMCO musicians.

Many conductors have felt the need to preface a rendition of Beethoven’s magnus opus with an introductory piece. At Tanglewood, the selections have recently run from Bach to Schoenberg and from Ives to Harbinson. However, the idea of juxtaposing Tippett’s Five Spirituals from A Child of Our Time with Beethoven’s Ninth has never been explored before. Verses, such the ones in Deep River talking about “the promised land, the land where all is peace”, do indeed share a message with Schiller’s Ode to Joy, even if their origins are very different.

Composed as a response to the atrocities perpetuated by the Nazi regime, Tippett’s oratorio frames choral music in consensus with a long European tradition that dates back to the Baroque era and beyond. There are many degrees of separation, not only musical, between the songs of the slaves on American plantations lamenting their fate and their intricate transformations – in terms of rhythm, pitch, harmony, or phrasing – heard in Tippett’s work. Nevertheless, when interpreted with compassion and empathy, the five spirituals can help today’s listeners to evoke in their minds and hearts the world where these songs were originally composed by their anonymous creators. 

That was exactly the case with their forceful and enthusiastic rendition by the all-volunteer Tanglewood Festival Chorus under the expert baton of BSO’s Choral Director, James Burton. The conductor mentioned in his foreword that the four soloists were given “temporary membership” in the ensemble. In effect, the mezzo and the tenor were only heard in Deep River, their voices barely rising over the huge chorister ensemble. Bass Jongmin Park made the only true soloistic contribution in Go down, Moses. His instrument has a truly operatic quality, although this song is forever engraved in my mind in Louis Armstrong’s raspy, “unrefined” voice.

With the choristers remaining on their risers throughout the interval-less concert, the stage filled with a large ensemble of TMCO instrumentalists (including 12 cellos and 8 double basses). Helmed by the outstanding Susanna Mälkki in her debut with the orchestra, they gave a truly remarkable performance of the Ninth. Just listening to the music without seeing the young, attentive and enthusiastic faces, there is no way one could have determined that this is not an ensemble with years of practice together. Initiated by a calm crescendo, the first movement quickly acquired a Sturm und Drang quality. Any missing dolcezza here was compensated in abundance by the strings’ performance and their interplay with the winds in the divine Adagio. With her trademark precise and elegant gestures, Mälkki helped the instrumentalists faultlessly navigate through the dancing counterpoint of the Scherzo. The chorus and orchestra collaborated smoothly in the rousing Finale. Among the distinguished soloists, Amanda Majeski stretched her voice a tad in the upper register. Mezzo J’Nai Bridges’ contribution was minimal, but Stephen Costello and Jongmin Park attempted to display the respective mellifluous and stentorian qualities of their voices.

After such a performance, Mälkki can deservedly add the paradigm “exemplary educator” to her already impressive resumé. Even more importantly, with this pool of young talent available, the future of American orchestras looks bright.