BSO at Carnegie Hall - Bolcom Premiere

Tonight the Boston Symphony Orchestra played the first New York performance of William Bolcom's Eighth Symphony for Chorus and Orchestra on William Blake's Prophetic Books, having performed the world premiere last week in Boston.  The ushering gods at Carnegie Hall managed to sabotage the premiere for those in the balcony seats (including yours truly) by failing to distribute the text booklets; one suspects that somebody wrongly concluded that because Mr. Thomas Quasthoff had cancelled his participation in the evening due to a cold, and the orchestra had substituted a purely instrumental work for his advertised Schubert songs, there would be no need for texts.  More alert ushering on the lower levels... typically boneheaded ushering in the balcony... 

So, my conclusions about this piece have to be even more tentative than they would otherwise be, since much of the time I had little more than a vague idea of what the chorus was singing.  The occasional solo bits sung by chorus members were more comprehensible, but as lines heard out of context made no real sense.  I can report that the music itself started off mainly as sound effects, but by the later portions of the piece seemed quite dramatic and even.... musical.  (I'm generally a Bolcom fan, although I find his more recent work less listener-friendly than the earlier stuff, and of course his cabaret songs -- several of which I heard wonderfully sung by Tom Meglioranza last week in a recital ignored by the city's print media -- are the most listener-friendly of all.)  I would want to hear this one again, preferably with the text, before spouting more opinion on such short acquaintance, but I can say that the last 10 or 15 minutes sounded purely magnificent, almost hymn-like.

Worth commenting upon, however, was the excellence of the chorus, which sang the entire 40 minute choral symphony from memory!!!!

Before the intermission, we had a spirited rendition of Schubert's student 4th Symphony, and a wonderfully melifluous reading of the Brahms 2nd Serenade.  (Although it hardly seems worth the effort for the entire BSO to schlep down to New York City and then to present a chamber piece of 25 minutes length during the concert.  The Serenade requires no violins, and conductor James Levine scaled down the remaining strings to chamber proportions to balance the winds. Of course, the stage was full to overflowing for the Bolcom, which called on extensive percussion and keyboards as well as a big string section, full winds, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.)

So - some missed opportunity here, and a shame to miss Quasthoff, but that cold is really going around....

Comments

[Carlos]

I' m impressed about what you say about the chorus, that they sang 40 minutes from memory. That sounds really professional to me. I hope you can hear it again, with the text.
Regards,
Carlos