Well into his 99th year, Herbert Blomstedt may have lost some mobility (relying on a roller walker to get to and from the podium), but he has definitely not lost his attention to nuance and detail and his ability to immerse himself completely in a composer’s sound world, nor to make music that matters. At this point in his life, it seems the music of Brahms matters most off all since it has figured prominently in his recent appearances with the Boston Symphony, including this all-Brahms program. In a brief clip shared on the orchestra’s social media, Blomstedt’s talks about Brahms “singability”. To illustrate that point, he paired two choral works: Schicksalslied and Nanie with the Fourth Symphony, for which the word “singable” does not come immediately to mind.
The opening of Schicksalslied was a remarkable, uncanny conjuring of sound, as if silence quietly exhaled the Elysian calm of Brahms’ orchestral introduction and the voices of the chorus rose out of the “soft ground [of] the happy immortals”. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, prepared by guest choral conductor Lisa Wong, sang with an otherworldly glow in the first part, then ferocious animus beginning at “Doch uns ist gegeben”. Brahms softens the bleakness of Hōlderlin’s conclusion by repeating the balm of his orchestral introduction, but with the timpani’s incessant pulse subdued. Here Blomstedt warmed the autumnal colors of the opening and broadened the tempo.
Schiller’s Nanie is a grim poem; divine indifference means even Beauty and the Perfect must die. The chorus’ expressive execution of Brahms’ fugal polyphony added a structural beauty to the poem, but Blomstedt realizes Brahms’ lyricism tempers the text but does not tame it. Despair lurks even behind the composer’s attempt to offer consolation by repeating select lines and words at the end. Following Brahms’ suggestion, Blomstedt doubled the harp, raising its profile in the score.
While Brahms may have been able to hold his pessimism at bay in these earlier choral settings, Blomstedt knows that loss and “progress” seem to have substantially darkened his worldview by the time he wrote his last symphony, which remains resolutely in the minor and offers only muted resignation in the face of doubt and uncertainty. Even so, he does not allow that awareness to constrict the spacious, panoramic dimension, reminiscent of the Hudson River school of painting, he creates. Nor does it mean Brahms’ music ceases to sing, or dance for that matter. It just means the song is more like a threnody than a hymn and the dances are tinged with desperation.
Blomstedt’s handling of the third movement was illustrative with its pealing phrases growing more frantic, fragmented, forced and ponderous. Brahms’ Fourth is also his most intricately contrapuntal symphony. Blomstedt’s antiphonal seating of the strings with cellos next to the first violins, double basses behind both and the violas next to the second violins made the counterpoint visual as phrases passed from section to section accentuated by a rich, russet string sound of shifting weight. Seating plus Blomstedt’s fabled attention to balance created a clarity of textures which allowed each section to blend while remaining distinct and small details often overwhelmed, like the triangle in the third movement, to remain consistently audible. The final movement was dark, brooding, at times harrowing. Yet, despite all of Brahms’ fears and doubts and the overall elegiac tone of the evening, Beauty did not die tonight and likely never will as long as someone with the soul and technical brilliance of a Herbert Blomstedt exists.
This review has been updated to correct the name of the guest choral director.
