SOUR NOTES FOR SEIJI

Seiji Ozawa's 25th year as music director of the BSO isn't all parties and applause. Ozawa got another whack from an out-of-town newspaper yesterday when New York Times critic Bernard Holland reviewed a BSO concert at Carnegie Hall. Back in December, Wall Street Journal critic Greg Sandow attacked Ozawa as a leader and musician and trashed the orchestra's current state. Yesterday Holland noted that Ozawa's quarter-century anniversary is "a milestone cheered by some, though others are restless for change." He said the program for the evening - Beethoven's Violin Concerto (with Anne-Sophie Mutter) and Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" - had "a certain weariness that no amount of professional application to the duties at hand could disguise." As for the Stravinsky in particular, Holland said: "Mr. Ozawa made it sound almost vulgar."

If I hadn't put the BSO's problems on the agenda, would the Globe have run this? A top administrator of another major American orchestra told me, approvingly, that my piece would have long-term effects. Maybe he was right. (Many thanks to Kathy Walunas, who sent me this latest Globe item.)

Here's the full text of Bernard's review:

OZAWA AND THE BOSTON OFFER AN EVENING OF THE FAMILIAR

By Bernard Holland 

The Boston Symphony paid one of its regular visits to Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night. Advertised is Seiji Ozawa’s 25th anniversary as music director. It is a milestone cheered by some, though others are restless for change. Here the program was solid and straightforward: the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Anne-Sophie Mutter and Stravinsky’s "Rite of Spring."
Those of us who follow music create in our memories identifying images of different orchestras. The Boston sound that I think of has brilliance without flash, and elegance without a trace of coyness. At its best, this historic organization has played with a glow and power that readily distinguished it from other American orchestras.
Listening to the Beethoven on Wednesday one heard other things. One was a certain weariness that no amount of professional application to the duties at hand could disguise. The shine seemed missing from the violin sections and at times communal intonation soured ever so slightly.
Here as in the Stravinsky, the Boston’s winds and brass showed what fine players they are. The clear, rich woodwinds spoke with special empathy for this unusual bit of Beethoveniana Indeed, the Violin Concerto is perhaps the least obsessive and most.materially generous of the great man’s major pieces. The first movement, in particular, moves at a stroll. Beethoven’s parsimony -- the tight, relentless grip on a few ideas -- relents; theme after theme pours out. We know the major-minor shifts are coming, but they never fail to take the breath away.
Ms. Mutter, with her wonderful control of the instrument and big, broad ideas, prefers grandeur to intimacy, and it is certainly her right to do so. She is a master of extremes breathless pianissimos, ringing vibrato, striking ritards and accelerandos at key moments. These are observations, not criticisms. Ms. Mutter’s bigness is never bloated; she simply sets a wider stage than most and then proceeds to occupy it handsomely.
The Stravinsky performance could have used Ms. Mutter’s sense of proportion. The brief melodic phrases were thick to the ear, stretched and contracted with a kind of Stokowskian languor. Everything else was simply loud. "The Rite of Spring" is, of course, weighted away from traditional orchestral string sound, but Mr. Ozawa’s brass-heavy balancing of instruments seemed specifically designed to obliterate all competition while exploiting surface excitement for its own sake. This great piece is more than cheap thrills. Mr. Ozawa made it sound almost vulgar.

My other new Globe appearance was yet another slash from Richard Dyer, the paper's music critic. On February 5, he interviewed Jacques Zoon, the BSO's principal flutist. Down towards the bottom of the piece, this paragraph showed up:

Like many other musicians in the orchestra, Zoon was astonished at the attack on the level of its playing that appeared in The Wall Street Journal late last year. ''I was really surprised at this; it seemed so unfair. No orchestra sounds every week the same - it depends on so many factors and on so many different individuals. I find it particularly terrible that Seiji Ozawa has been so misjudged. He is always listening and reacting to what he hears; he is always really communicating with the orchestra. Other conductors have such strong ideas about the pieces they are leading that they never listen to what is actually coming out of the musicians. I find that the Concertgebouw and the BSO are very similar in culture. Of course there are differences because different people are there, but the orchestras are somehow the same - there is something prestigious in the sound that gives it its special character, something golden.''

Sure, Richard. And many of the musicians support me. (Or as I was told by a well-connected source a week after the Zoon interview came out: "You have a cheering section.") Richard, of course, knows just as well as I do that many members of the BSO don't like Ozawa, and probably knows better than I do who they all are. Would he consider trying just a little journalism, and interviewing one or two of them, if only for balance? (Many thanks to Stuart Hyke, for sending Dyer's text to me.)