Concert Review: The MET Orchestra and Boulez
May 16, 2010, Carnegie Hall
The MET Orchestra-Pierre Boulez-Deborah Polaski
Bartok-Schoenberg
In the opera house, the MET Orchestra under the long reign of Levine has always been an excellent orchestra. In non-opera repertoire they seem too to have maintained a small foothold and a high standard, though I have not been overly enamored of their recordings. This marked the first time I heard them outside the MET pit.
It was not surprising at all that the orchestra played with fine nuance and great attention to color and mood. One can say the musicians were almost vocal in their outpouring. However, despite the very fine playing I could not be as enthusiastic as the NYT review. Boulez, though frail, conducted just as he always did, with superb concentration over the considerable span of the Bartok Wooden Prince but, as one is unreasonably to expect from him, underplayed the score's more visceral and elemental aspects. I found the same to be true of Deborah Polaski in Schoenberg's Erwartung: she sang well but I felt she had not injected enough passion into the proceedings; lack of hysteria is a reservation in this of all pieces.
But I was glad for an oppoptunity to hear 2 pieces not commonly encountered in the concert hall.
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