Jonathan McPhee and the Longwood Symphony perform Beethoven's Ninth  
By JEFFREY GANTZ  |  October 10, 2007
 
  
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Decent catch, Transfigured nights, Amazing weekend, More 
- Decent catch
   The opening moments of Opera Boston’s new production of  Les pêcheurs de perles  set me up to expect an extraordinary evening.    
- Transfigured nights
 James Levine and the BSO resumed their Beethoven/Schoenberg series with superb performances of two pieces at the opposite ends of the Schoenberg spectrum.  
- Amazing weekend
   James Levine’s opening salvo for his year-long Beethoven/Schoenberg series with the Boston Symphony Orchestra couldn’t have been more ambitious: the work that opened Symphony Hall in 1900.    
- Great gifts
 Knussen’s interludes, barely seven minutes, are a complex but attractive mix of the seductively creepy and the intricately lively.  
- Is there a pianist in the house?
 Moved and excited by pianist Leon Fleisher in Beethoven’s  Emperor  Concerto with the Boston Symphony, I wanted to hear it again.  
- Opening nightmare
 It wasn’t as bad as what happened at Opening Night at the Pops last May, but it was still awful.  
- The roar of the crowd
 I wasn’t there, but the opening-night dissatisfaction with the Met’s new  Tosca  was widely reported.  
- Anticipation
   James Levine was back in front of the BSO after his Christmas break, and as good as at least one of the guest conductors.    
- Classical giants
 Audiences love the Beethoven Seventh. And this audience went bananas. But I didn’t.  
- Magic bullets
 Last week’s Boston Symphony Orchestra program looked odd on paper, but the concert was a knockout.   
- Rise and fall
 With its production of the Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Opera Boston consolidates its position as this city’s most exciting opera company.  
- Less 

 
 
 
 
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