Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall

Due to my out of body experience last time at Carnegie Hall, I just had to go back for more. This time was the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the helm of, guess who… James Levine. It ended up being however, a very different Carnegie Hall experience.

Music and artistic observations are clearly my focus in writing, but this time I need to start by talking about the audience. I love old people, I really do. They’re wiser than us, my grandmother was one of them and she introduced me to opera. Quite frankly, if they’re into the arts then they probably have some dough. Many of these treasured institutions like the Met or Carnegie Hall would simply not exist without their generous contributions. That said, when you’re attending a concert at the most famous hall in the world where the acoustics are especially magnificent, please turn down your hearing aid!!! Instead of giving my entire attention to the BSO last night, I (and I suspect many other audience members as well) was continuously disturbed by the high-pitched beeping of a hearing aid coming from somewhere in the audience. Even after two successive announcements by Carnegie staff regarding electronics and hearing aids specifically, this persons ear kept on tweeting. It’s not right for me to get so angry. My grandfather wears hearing aids, and I love him. I would also not hesitate to rip them out of his ears if they started going bonkers at Carnegie Hall.

The program for the evening was energetically high. It started out with a clunky, disjointed, yet rhythmically driving performance of Elliott Carter’s Dialogues, for piano and orchestra. The rhythmic vitality continued during a somewhat monotonous account of Hector Berlioz’s Harold in Italy. Yet full of energy and dramatic dynamics, I still felt unsettled, mostly because of this faint yet pervasive beeping sound coming from the audience.

Fresh from winning a Grammy Award for a recording of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the BSO and James Levine reached their zenith during the second half. Ravel’s Piano Concerto for Left Hand was romantically and subliminally performed by the French pianist, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. The climax came during Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2. The technically challenging wind parts seemed nothing more than a fleeting dream to the orchestra players, while Maestro Levine gradually and steadily increased the dramatic throttle. The closer we got to the end, the less it seemed like we were floating on clouds and the more it seemed like a speed racer straight out of Star Wars. The orchestra performed with the elegance of a matador and the raw energy of Serena Williams. Finally, the orchestra was playing loud enough to cover up that beeping.