San Francisco Classical Voice

Number two, Fons Juventatis derives from a Roman myth about Jupiter transforming the nymph Juventas into a fountain that spouts water with restorative properties. A sense of fluidity, lightness, effervescence is generated from quick musical gestures in woodwinds, then the strings, continuing in the development of tiny elements against long melodic lines.

More's Utopia, the vision of an ideal society invented by the martyr to Henry VIII's ruthless marital career, is a somber study. It bursts out of a chordal mass into percussion, then to changing waves of texture and harmony, punctuated by sharp bursts and is “cut off” at the end with a bang. The concision and economy of the Illusions, the energies generated by all the contrasts working simultaneously, and yet withal, the directness, mark the composer's movement into new regions. Carter continues to move forward in his late years with self-renewing energy, as have all the great composers. The performance was strong and uncommonly lucid.

From the start, Ives' Three Places in New England, the sound of Levine's BSO in Symphony Hall was possessive. The dark solidity of the “Black March” that is “The ‘St. Gaudens' in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)” and the sharp-edged rhythm, bloomed in that hall. More crucially, in “Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut,” the clarity of the famously multilayered popular tunes was matched by the distinctness of the softer musical at the center. Finally, the mesh of sonority and complex harmony flowing in the impressionism of “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” was translucent because of the balance Levine achieved, and that his players could produce, hearing themselves in the context of the whole orchestra so well on this stage. It was a moving performance.

Foss' Time Cycle is his major, signature piece. His style in this piece synthesized major currents in the late 1950s, the singer picking out lines of widely spaced intervals, angular lines of single notes, after the 12-tone manner. In the setting of Auden's “We're Late,” the vocal part is rhythmically irregular, like a skewed clock. It's pictorial in Housman's “When the bells justle.” Upshaw plucked these, high-low, high-low notes unerringly, her tone pure, pitch exact. In all four songs, the orchestra is used sparingly in highly selective color writing. The style of certain modern paintings is an inescapable association.

Upshaw turned dramatic, involved in the intense monolog, Kafka's “Sechzehtner Januar” (January 16) and was darkly eloquent in Nietzsche's “O Mensch, gib Acht!” (Also sprach Zarathustra), a stunning performance.

Last came the sparkling performance of Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, Thibaudet spot on in the rippling virtuosities, of course, but more important, joined at the hip rhythmically to Levine. The conductor might have been playing the solo while leading, so unified were the syncopations and tempo let-ups and surges. Here in this, as in the other works, the sound in that hall paid tribute to a great orchestra, and the players loved it back. Their chairs sit on the flat, no risers, and yet the upstage winds come through exactly as wished for. The string bass sonority resonates through the floor into the listener's body. The single section sound of violins and violas was gorgeous in the singing countermelodies, and in the slow bluesy movement, the trumpet solo (Charles Schleuter) was rich and soulful, the accompanying clarinets (William Hudgins, Scott Andrews) velvet.

Finally, about Levine. To see him on the podium evokes memories of Monteux. He conducts in front of his broad, short body, his movements not particularly visible to the audience. His conducting, while not theatrically showy, is obviously, demonstrative musically to the players. What a refreshing style, undistracting, all attention on the music. Listening to his gracious, respectful, unaffected manner talking to those who came early for the pre-concert encounter, and sensing his close rapport with the musicians, there was no mistaking that Boston is already enjoying a new, personal relationship with its maestro.