All finales are anticlimactic

chorus on stage

Boston Globe: Levine, Mahler triumph at Tanglewood. On the positive side, I can be assured that, unlike other groups in which I have sung, our concerts will almost always be reviewed. On the other hand, all our preparation, hard work, and ultimately ecstatic performance was summed up by the reviewer as:

The music is so tightly wound that it explodes — it lasts 25 minutes or so, but it passes like a flash of lightning, a noisy one. Levine and his orchestra, the soloists, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and the American Boychoir fired it like a cannon — it was noisy and exciting, it was hectic, and the temptation to scream offered by the vocal writing was not avoided.

Ah well. I can only hope they were talking about the soloists, not us.

Funniest moment of the night: One of the sopranos, who had the most sublime vocal line of the night, delivered it from high above the shell for dramatic effect. When the applause came, due to some misunderstanding—or worse, some mishap—she never came down, and there were three bows taken for the rest of the soloists before Levine realized she was still up there and waved up to acknowledge her contributions.

Least funny moment of the night: I had hoped that, since it had rained the whole week, it would stop for the performance. And it did, but only about half an hour before curtain, and it rained more or less continuously on us all the way home.