Peculiar Partners: The Piper and the Pops

Innovation often disappoints us. Whether an old or a new style is the best is irrelevant: the tension between the two still exists. Such tension filled last weekend's Boston Symphony Orchestra concert.

The concert featured two of the classical music industry's most famous figures, conductor/composer John Williams and flutist James Galway. Maestro Williams is most widely known for his 75 film scores, including Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, the three Indiana Jones films, E.T., Superman, the Star Wars trilogy and, most recently, Rosewood. For these and others, Williams has accrued five Oscars, one British Academy Award and 16 Grammys. He has also composed many concert pieces, including several concertos, most recently a trumpet concerto commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra. Boston audiences are most familiar with Williams as the conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. Named the 19th conductor of the Pops in 1980, he retired in 1993. He remains the Conductor Laureate of the Orchestra and is Artist-in-Residence at Tanglewood.

Through countless performances, popular recordings and television appearances James Galway has come to be known as one of the most beloved performers in the world. His training is unparalled: he studied at the Royal College of Music, the Paris Conservatoire and with acclaimed flutist Marcel Moyse. His repertoire stretches across all categories of music, from Bach sonatas to progressive jazz to folk songs of his native Ireland.

The performance produced ample evidence of the artistry behind the fame and of their notoriety in classical music circles. The concert consisted of three wood-wind concertos, a Flute Concerto in G by Johann Joachim Quantz, a concerto for bassoon and orchestra called The Five Sacred Trees by Williams and the Pied Piper Fantasy by John Corigliano. A small highlighted paragraph in the program booklet introduced this program as an experiment in concerto styles, setting forth the traditional three-movement Quantz concerto as a "control" for the more contemporary programmatic styles of the last two concertos. Even in this small paragraph the contrast between the traditional and modern styles becomes problematic: "Taken together with the Quantz concerto, these recent scores demonstrate anew the flexibility, the range, and the variety of even the most venerable of musical types," it reads. It seems that the only reason the Quantz was included was to frame the contemporary pieces. Such programming does not do justice to either the Quantz, which appears obsolete in this light, or the contemporary pieces which are appreciated only for their divergence from traditional forms.

Despite the tension surrounding the program, the performances were superb. Galway performed the Quantz concerto with a reduced orchestra. He directed the first few bars of the piece, then took up the solo theme. His was a crystalline sound, rich in the lower registers and piercing in the higher range. He attacked the beginning of each phrase and sustained his brilliant sound through each seemingly impossible passage. His playing seemed to be in a different realm from the other musicians. It was difficult to associate the beautiful bubbling sound the produced with notes on a page. The orchestra, on the other hand, was rather sloppy in the absence of a conductor. Their unison was poor, and they occasionally lagged behind Galway.

The next piece was Williams' bassoon concerto, The Five Sacred Trees. According to Williams' program notes on his piece, it was inspired by the writings of poet Robert Graves about the prayers that ancient Celtic tribes incanted before felling a tree. While each tree had its own prayer, Williams invokes five: the great oak, Tortan, yew, ash and the Dathi tree. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for bassoonist Judith LeClair. In this week-end's performance, the solo bassoon part was played by the BSO's principal bassoonist Richard Svoboda, who has been with the orchestra since 1989. Svoboda's moving performance was a great tribute to both his technical mastery and his artistic interpretation. The piece itself was beautiful: Williams is a master of capturing images in music. The middle movements were tricky, with difficult rhythmic passages and unpredictable dynamics. The last movement, Dathi--the prayer for the tree which exercised authority over the Poets--was especially memorable, with an evocative melody rising out of the thick orchestral tissue.

The last piece brought Williams back to the podium and Galway back to center stage as the soloist. This performance of John Corigliano's Pied Piper Fantasy was extremely theatrical. The piece began in the dark, with the hall gradually growing light when Galway as the Pied Piper entered from a side door. Galway appeared on stage in an extravagant red and yellow robe and acted the role of the piper battling and driving away an infestation of rats. The middle movement was the War Cadenza, featuring Galway on solo flute. It was truly the highlight of the piece. The musical special effects Galway invoked in this movement, while dramatic and entertaining, in no way detracted from his musical and technical mastery. The piece climaxed as several young flutists and drummers from local music and high schools marched through the hall to join Galway on stage. Galway then took up a tin whistle and led them out. The concerto ended in complete darkness. This piece could have been an utter disaster, but it succeeded thanks to Galway's charisma and stage presence.

However, the Pied Piper Fantasy, like the rest of the program, was still a startling break with the Symphony's staid tradition. The concert in general drew much disapproval from the audience. "This is what happens when John Williams conducts the Symphony," grumbled one woman afterwards, undoubtedly voicing the thoughts of many other patrons. Perhaps it is the purist in all of us that goes to Symphony Hall with a strict set of ideas, and perhaps it is because of these ideas that this kind of performance fails to realize our ideal of an authentic concert experience.