Word: ozawa
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...never heard of Maxwell. That didn't keep them from playing an excellent rendition of Mahler's Third Symphony last Friday to a packed house at Symphony Hall. The Symphony was accompanied by The Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the P.A.L.S. (Performing Artists at Lincoln School) and directed by Seiji Ozawa. The Orchestra played the music so pleasantly that throughout the performance they kept the audience in those most enjoyable moments just before sleep. The French horn section stood out and played beautifully in all of the sections in which they could be easily distinguished. Even the oddly-timed cymbal crash...
...stars of the evening, Mahler, Ozawa, and Quivar, were not equally matched on Friday. Though Quivar sang the German words of the fourth movement very beautifully and powerfully, and with the skill one expects of a diva, she didn't have the means to express her performance as passionately as the members of the orchestra. They moved with all of their might to make sounds that impressed the audience, yet she, singing in between their music, remained almost motionless during her performance. This stiffness was directly contrasted if not highlighted by Ozawa's spirited conducting not a foot away from...
...Ozawa directed with all of the vivacity that the audience expects. Though the conductor must lead the orchestra well, which he did because the music was beautiful, he also has the responsibility of entertaining the audience. His fabulous hair and coattails flailed as he brought in this group and excused this section and held his pose for a moment just for effect. By the end he had performed superbly for the people on both sides of him; the audience...
...East-is-West spin to things. The 516-lb. wrestler who sanctified the earth, after all, was a Hawaiian (called in when the only wrestler stronger than he is contracted bronchitis), and the rousing chorus of Beethoven's Ninth (a perennial Japanese Christmas favorite) was conducted by Seiji Ozawa, just returned from Boston. Andrew Lloyd Webber was responsible for the ad-worthy chorus, When Children Rule the World (and the producer of the whole extravaganza was the man responsible for a Japanese West Side Story...
This challenging piece showcased Maestro Ozawa's brilliant and lyric conducting. Presiding over the orchestra with brooding intensity, he seemed to embody the melancholy and passionate spirit of the symphony itself. That the orchestra responded so thoroughly to Ozawa's often extreme demands only further attests to his effectiveness as a conductor...