Boston Classical Review

Baritone Thomas Hampson channels President Nixon in excerpts from John Adams’ Nixon in China with Andris Nelson conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Chorus Thursday night. Photo: Hilary Scott

Officially, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s “E Pluribus Unum” festival ended at the beginning of February. But the grassroots demonstrations that have sprung up in support of music director Andris Nelsons following the board of trustees’ announcement this month that his tenure will end with his contract next year might want to adopt the moniker as their own. They’re certainly doing a bang-up job illustrating the principle.

And now the movement has a nifty totem: red carnations to match those worn by Nelsons and the ensemble. Before Thursday night’s concert at Symphony Hall, George Whiting, who recently started a petition for orchestra leadership to engage in a town hall meeting with the public, was handing out artificial flowers to concertgoers on Mass Ave. By the time the lights went down, the floor, balconies, and stage were all speckled with crimson.

As it happened, the evening’s shows of solidarity were artistic as well as emotional. Nelsons’ time in Boston has had its ups and downs and there’s a strong case to be made that thirteen years with one orchestra, which will be the situation in August 2027, is enough.

But when sparks fly like they have the last couple of weeks, with no heir-apparent in the wings, and termination hinges on a vague concept management won’t (or can’t) publicly elaborate upon, perhaps that proposition is worth reconsidering.

This week’s program again played to the conductor’s strengths, with the curious pairing of something old and very familiar, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, alongside something newer and less well-known: scenes from John Adams’ Nixon in China.

Surprisingly, before Thursday, the BSO hadn’t played anything—not even The Chairman Dances—from the Worcester-born composer’s groundbreaking opera. A meditation on the 37th president’s transformative 1972 visit to China, the work raised more than a few eyebrows for its focus on then-recent events prior to its 1987 premiere.

But Adams’ multifaceted score and Alice Goodman’s extraordinary libretto have aged extremely well. The latter, in particular, sings with a touching profundity one could hardly have imagined even a decade ago. Its humanizing treatment of the title character is particularly striking.

This week’s Nixon, Thomas Hampson, projected no shortage of confidence and charisma. Now 70, the baritone’s instrument still has some mileage in it, though a bit of tonal rawness crept into Thursday’s performance. Still, the singer, who just finished a run of the complete opera in Paris, has the former president’s sometimes-hokey mannerisms down pat and his account of the great “News” aria was a tour-de-force.

Renée Fleming, who sang First Lady Pat Nixon opposite Hampson in the City of Lights, was relegated to a supporting part on this night. Even so, she delivered a sumptuous, lived-in rendition of “This is prophetic.”

Renée Fleming sings Pat Nixon’s aria, “This is Prophetic” from Nixon in China with Andris Nelsons and the BSO Thursday night. Photo: Hilary Scott

The present arrangement of scenes, which incorporates parts of Nixon’s first two acts, was prepared especially for these concerts by Adams. While it skews the narrative’s chronology a bit and necessarily omits some fine music (like the show-stopping “I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung”), the set gives a flavor of the larger work while assigning other key roles—notably that of the Chinese premier Chou En-Lai—to a choir.

On Thursday, Chou’s lines were delivered with impressive unanimity by the men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which was prepared by guest conductor Lisa Wong. The full group handled the traditional choruses—soldiers reciting Mao’s “Three Rules of Discipline” and the party scene that ends Act 1—with similar aplomb, their tone well-blended and diction precise.

Though Adams subbed in the BSO’s clarinet section while a student at Harvard in the ‘60s, his music is hardly part of the orchestra’s DNA. Neither is Nelsons a noted champion. Even so, Thursday’s sometimes thick-textured traversal was invigorating. The conductor led all the music’s tricky rhythmic transitions securely and this resulted in some thrilling orchestral playing, notably during the landing of the Spirit of ’76 and concluding “Cheers.”

Nelsons was on more representative ground with Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony.

As local audiences are well aware, the BSO music director is sometimes his own worst enemy in the standard canon, getting sidetracked by little things and stretching out phrases unnaturally. This time around, though, he was as unfussy with the Czech master’s chestnut as could be. Aside from some edgy ensemble in the Scherzo, Thursday’s was a tightly played, shapely affair. The Largo was a model of captivating beauty, intensity, and focus, while the finale offered no shortage of sweep, passion, and energy.

But, crucially, Nelsons teased out at least as much wistfulness, mystery, and introspection as excitement from the score’s pages. The end result was a “New World” Symphony of triumph and determination—as well as deep sadness and tragedy. Rarely does that combination emerge with such potency as on Thursday.

Afterwards, the night’s house offered an ovation that dwarfed last week’s thunderous showing. After Nelsons’ second solo bow, one couldn’t help but think that a lyric from Nixon might be usefully repurposed for the benefit of the orchestra’s Board.

“I opposed China,” the president sings near the end of Act 1. “I was wrong.”

If as staunch an anti-communist as Richard Nixon could pull off that flip-flop, anything should be possible.

The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Hall. bso.org

Photo: Hilary Scott

Posted in Performances
No Comments