Virgil Moojen

>Does anyone have an opinion about wich orchestra is the greatest?
>Maybe you believe that a particulair orchestra is the best at playing
>a particulair composer.

All those who stated that this is perhaps an unanswerable question
to answer with finality are right.  I had an occasion in the late
winter to compare the Boston Symphony on their home turf, and the San
Franciscans on tour at Symphony Hall.  The BSO did a lighter piece,
Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast" while MTT's band tackled Mahler's Fifth
Symphony.  Both swept aside any supposed "difficulty" of execution and
put on veritable master classes for any student of the symphony orchestra.
The BSO negotiated all the twists and turns of Walton's then cutting-edge
scoring, modulating from near silence to a great roar, and even seemed
to have fun with the old chestnut.  (It didn't hurt to have the wonderful
John Oliver-led Tanglewood Festival Chorus).  The Golden Gaters also
presented a technically flawless performance of an admittedly greater
piece...so much so I never was on edge that some famously difficult
passages would be compromised.  The SFSO seemed to me a little "brighter"
sounding and transparent than the homeboys.  The latter are doing the
Mahler 5th this fall, but I tend not to listen to the same piece twice
in a year's time.  One will have to note whether the reviewers compare
the two orchestras.  Tanglewood got off to a late start so I didn't get
to hear the Boston Symphony the 4th of July weekend and didn't venture
westward this summer.  So my most recent aural memory of the orchestra
is from the regular season.  During the transition from Seiji to Jimmy,
the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal indicted the orchestra
somewhat for declining standards, but in the winter of 2004, I observed
a world-class orchestra acdquitting itself admirably.  (I was also at
the Debussy "Pelleas" and Berlioz "L'enfance du Christ")

Laurence Glavin
Methuen, Mass.