LENOX -- The James Levine era began at Tanglewood last night with rain, cold, and Mahler's Eighth Symphony. A crowd of 5,436 people braved the weather to pay their respects, listen to the music, and cheer the Boston Symphony Orchestra's new music director at the end. They cheered him at the beginning, too -- Levine, whose only previous appearance at Tanglewood was 33 years ago, was greeted with a standing ovation.
The Mahler Eighth has been nicknamed the ''Symphony of a Thousand" because of the huge forces required to perform it. Levine made do with 361 musicians, but they produced a mighty and thrilling noise. The first movement of the symphony is a setting of an ancient Latin hymn. 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.
