by Lloyd Schwartz
Four years ago, the BSO offered its first performance in nearly 20 years of one of the greatest and strangest works of the century, Mahler's symphonic song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde (his setting of German translations of ancient Chinese poems), led with youthful impetuosity and aching nostalgia by Metropolitan Opera honcho James Levine (who'll be returning next month for Haydn's Creation). Last week it was Seiji Ozawa, in his first shot at this masterpiece with the BSO. It had some intensity, though the notes remained mainly just notes, and not all of them sounded as beautiful or as delicate as they should have.
The BSO strings have been in fine shape lately (the gorgeous cello playing in the slow movement of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony the week before almost compensated for the squareness of principal guest conductor Bernard Haitink's beat and conception). But in Mahler's crucial oboe part, assistant principal oboist Keisuke Wakao had neither the insinuating tone nor the musical sensitivity of retired principal oboist Alfred Genovese; Wakao plays the oboe -- literally -- as if it were a trumpet. In one extraordinary passage of "Der Abschied" ("The Parting"), the last song, Mahler's profound half-hour-long leavetaking from everything he holds dear, the flute is left all alone with the soloist. Jacques Zoon sounded like a bereft nightingale fluttering through the pines, warbling to the singer awaiting his final departure from his mysterious "friend."
And here's the big news. Mahler called Das Lied "A Symphony for Tenor and Contralto (or Baritone) and Orchestra." Jessye Norman breezed in for the Saturday-night concert (and next week's gig at Carnegie Hall), but in the three surrounding performances, the "alto" was German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, making his Boston debut in a part he was singing for the first time. And he was extraordinary.
The first thing you notice about Quasthoff is his disability. He was a thalidomide baby, born in 1959. He's barely four feet tall, and neither his hands nor his arms are fully developed. But he can sing! His timbre reminds me of Sanford Sylvan's, a little darker, with a rich, full, even tone all the way up and all the way down. "Warm," "honest," "natural" were the adjectives I kept hearing in the Symphony Hall corridors and stairwells afterward. He connects effortlessly with both notes and words in a way that seems beyond art. "Sunshine mirrors their slender limbs," he sings in the fourth song, "Von der Schönheit" ("Of Beauty") -- and you could see that glint and feel the heat. And by ever so subtly leaning on and stretching out the vowels in "dunkel" and "heissen," he let you into the "darkness" and the "searing" of the proud girl's gaze as she watches the young man she secretly yearns for gallop by on his horse. Quasthoff caught but didn't overplay the bitterness of "Der Einsame im Herbst" ("The Solitary in Autumn"), and he melted into the repeated last word of "Der Abschied": "Ewig" ("Ever. Forever.").
Quasthoff's partner was Canadian-born Wagnerian tenor Ben Heppner, who may well have been even more expansive than he was with Levine four years ago. His voice is large but very focused, and he stood at the very lip of the stage, leaning on the conductor's podium for balance, to be as close to the audience (and as far from the brasses?) as possible. Getting drowned out is a built-in risk for Mahler's tenor, and Ozawa didn't go out of his way to keep the orchestral lid on. In "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde" ("The Drinking Song of Earth's Despair," in BSO violinist/celesta player Jerome Rosen's eloquent translation) and "Der Trunkene im Frühling" ("The Drunkard in Spring"), Heppner suggested an inebriated instability, yet his delicacy mirrored the glittering innocence in "Von der Jugend" ("Of Youth"), with its green-and-white porcelain pavilion mirrored upside-down in the water, as seductive an image of heaven as any in music.
The witty program began with a very different kind of Chinese music: Bartók's suite from his sado-erotic pantomime, The Miraculous Mandarin. This is one of Ozawa's showpieces, and though it was lively, it was neither very lubricious nor threatening. The clarinet "plays" a prostitute beckoning to customers from her window; William R. Hudgins made a lovely but awfully chaste sound. The trombones were hornier. But Ozawa suggested a genial carnival atmosphere more appropriate to Petrushka than to Bartók's sinister demi-monde.
The Boston Phoenix - 5 November 1998