This video of James Taylor being accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma on Sweet Baby James, recorded Sept. 15, 2008 on the porch of the Red Lion Inn at Stockbridge, is blowing up the Internet – at least my little piece of it!
2008
Review of Tanglewood performances during July, 2008.
July 5, 6, 12, 20, 27, 2008 performances reviewed by Dave Conlin Read
We attended four concerts at Tanglewood during July: one illustrated the aphorism “vita brevis, ars longa;” another reminded us that the Tanglewood Festival Chorus are the world’s poorest paid pros; the third showed that the baton works equally well on the distaff side; and finally we saw that nature can impose a felicitous collaboration upon art, even while being otherwise mischevious.
B.S.O. music director James Levine chose to open the 2008 Tanglewood season (July 5 & 6) with a reprising of Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyans, which the orchestra had performed in April during their Symphony Hall subscription season. Not only is this a long piece of music, rarely played, but it never was performed entirely until long after Berlioz was dead – 100 years. Ars longa, vita brevis, indeed.
Maestro Levine divided the work in two, conducting the first 2 acts Saturday night before a Shed full of the usual opening night throng, followed by acts 3, 4, and 5 on Sunday afternoon to a much smaller assemblage.
As one learns from Hugh MacDonald’s extensive program notes, Berlioz had in his mind Virgil’s story of the death of Dido (The Aeneid) from childhood. He completed the composition in 1858 and got to work on having it performed, even lobbying the support of Emperor, who rejected it in favor of Wagner’s Tannhauser. Berlioz only ever heard truncated versions of Part ll.
And so to open the 2008 Tanglewood season, Levine conducted the BSO, eleven vocal soloists and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in what he calls “one of the most amazing works ever created by anyone.”
It was a triumph of brilliant artistry, followed soon by the news that Mr. Levine, who looked exuberant and fit on the podium all weekend, would require surgery and miss the rest of the Tanglewood season. (He is expected to be ready to resume his full schedule with the Metropolitan Opera and the BSO in September.)
On July 12, Bernard Haitnik conducted the BSO in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, with soloists Heidi Grant Murphy and Christianne Stotijn, and John Oliver conducting the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, fresh from their six-hours on stage the previous week.
Calling them the world’s poorest paid pros is just a trick to call attention to the TFC, which is made up of members who donate their services, meaning they are amateurs in the true sense of the word, but who perform at a level usually seen only among top-level professionals.
John Oliver founded the TFC in 1970, comprised today of 32 sopranos, 32 mezzo-sopranos, 29 tenors, and 35 basses. This performance was one of seven during their summer season. They toured Europe last fall with James Levine and the BSO and also have performed in Europe with Maestro Haitnik and in the Far East with Seiji Ozawa.
On July 20, BSO Assistant conductor Shi-Yeon Sung made her BSO and Tanglewood debut with a program of Schumann and Mendelssohn, with Garrick Ohlsson playing the Schumman Piano Concerto in A. Winner of the top prize in the Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamburg, she is scheduled to make her BSO subscription series debut at Symphony Hall in April 2009.
Ms. Sung was a captivating presence at the podium, alternating between a frenetic yet fluid dynamism and utter stillness according to the requirements of the score. And judging from the beautiful performances by Ohlsson and the BSO, she has the musicians’ full confidence, affection, and respect.
The special feature scheduled for the July 27 program in the Koussevitsky Music Shed was the performance of Joan Tower’s In Memory, performed by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Roberto Abbado conducting, with Ms. Tower in the audience.
Intruding upon the occasion was the weather, which resulted in a patron being struck by lightning earlier in the afternoon, torrential downpours delaying the start of the program, and finally, rolling thunder that seemed to us not so much a distraction from Ms. Tower’s elegaic composition, but somehow served to frame it, if not provide an uncalled-for embellishment.
Ms. Tower began work on In Memory, which is about death and loss, during the summer of 2001 after the death of a close friend, then the events of September 11 amplified the feeling of loss and suffering in the world and so increased the intensity of the music.
The injured patron’s condition has improved; that unfortunate event and nature’s unscheduled accompaniment only serve to make Ms. Tower’s composition and the rest of the day’s performance all the more memorable.
James Taylor’s 60th Birthday party at Tanglewood, July 4, 2008
July 4, 2008 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read
A perfectly good rock and roll show, billed as “James Taylor and his Band of Legends” got turned into an event that will go down in Berkshires‘ lore as the night of several stars; live, on video, and animated. It’ll get tagged something like “James Taylor’s 60th Birthday show,” with a variety of sub-titles depending on where else fans loiter on the entertainment scene: Yo Yo Ma, John Travolta, Paul McCartney, Carole King, Homer Simpson.
A third of the way into the second set, by which time Taylor and the Legends already had earned their keep with a nicely paced ninety-plus minutes of often dazzling music, Taylor told the audience “… from here on out, things are going to open up.” And so they did, with his pal John Travolta coming onstage during the Dixie Chicks‘ “Some Days You Gotta Dance” to MC the birthday party segment of the show. (When a rock ‘n roller hits 60, way more than the actual date, March 12, is appropriate for the celebration.)
James Taylor’s 60th birthday celebration at Tanglewood
Can this cat really have reached the threshold for being referred to with a Latin preface, a la “sexagenarian James Taylor rocks throng?”
After a big hug and a kiss, Travolta introduced cellist Yo Yo Ma, who accompanied his neighbor and friend on a poignant rendition of “Sweet Baby James.” Sublime. To the ridiculous? Next was an hilarious video greeting from Homer Simpson that closed with Simpson saying, “…from one person who has cleaned up his act, to another” and introducing the next song, “Steamroller Blues.”
In that little segment, from a duet with Yo Yo Ma, to the totally nutty Homer Simpson clip (including JT’s appearance on the Simpsons in the mid-nineties), to a crazy mad blistering rendition of Taylor’s “Steamroller,” you get an inkling of Taylor’s breadth as a musician and his evolvement as a person – who else has a peer group with that span?
Next was a friend from forty years ago, Paul McCartney, via video, who recalled their meeting when Taylor was the first musician signed by the Beatles’ Apple Records in 1968, and adding that he “has no sympathy for someone turning 60, which is beginning to sound young to me.”
But the icing on this 6-decker cake of a show was the presence of Carole King, who gets refrenced anyway at every James Taylor concert.
The two old friends, who did a series of gigs late last year in celebration of the Troubador in LA, sang “Natural Woman,” “Up on the Roof,” and “You’ve Got a Friend.”
With the typically generous encore, the show went on until a little past ten, ending with the world’s most heartfelt rendition of “How Sweet It Is,” and fireworks over Stockbridge Bowl.
We’re confident nobody has taken up Taylor on his offer to “fight anyone” who disputes his claim that his Band of Legends is the “best band in the world.” They are, and you can find more about them by following the links below:
2008 Review of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood
Article updated June 26, 2018 by Dave Conlin Read
The June 30, 2008 installment of “A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood, with Garrison Keillor” could be emended to read “…with Garrison Keillor and Inga Swearingen,” as the lovely Californian played a variety of roles in every segment of the show, except for the news, which only can be delivered by the lanky Minnesotan. When you consider that Keillor has been at this since the Nixon administration, it doesn’t take a genius to conjecture that he may be contemplating passing the torch to a new generation. Ms. Swearingen, for whom we’ve been carrying a torch since first seeing her on the 2004 show here, displayed the versatility and endurance that it would take to host a two hour show, partiucularly the facility to flow effortlessly between a comic and a serious persona. (Photo:copyright Denise Ofelia Mangen)
Of course there could be no Prairie Home Companion without the sui generis Garrison Keillor, but if there ever were to be a Regis and Kathy Lee for the smart set, we saw the model for it today.
Ms. Swearingen, with a Master’s in music to compliment Keillor’s mastery of English, radiates joy, beauty, and artistry from the stage unlike any performer we’ve ever seen. She, too, is one of a kind, and until we find a weekly show for her, you’ll have to be content with her recordings and gigs, or you could enroll in her course at Cuesta College in her hometown of San Luis Obispo.
Besides those two, this show featured the Del McCoury Band and recent Poet Laureate Donald Hall, as well as the usual funny business, with Tanglewood angles, and musical augmentation from the ad hoc Tanglewood/B.S.O. rhythm section, “Old Wood and Heavy Metal.”
McCoury and band were brilliant, crisp picking and strumming along with rich harmonizing; it was Bluegrass at its best – taut and restrained, rather than showy. Their choice of material was marked by lyrics so simple and direct that even an English major could get them.
Simple and direct characterizes also the poetry of Donald Hall, whose genius it is to embue plain language with the pathos of a life not only lived well, but with ardent attention to one’s place on earth and to one’s place in relation to another.
(More about Donald Hall and Dave Read)
Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mark Elder, performs Sibelius and Shostakovich
Saturday, 16 February 2008 performance reviewed by Karl Henning
Sibelius, Violin Concerto in D Minor, Opus 47
Shostakovich, Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Opus 43
Vadim Repin, violin
The Boston Symphony Orchestra
Mark Elder, guest conductor
Similarly, when last the Sibelius Violin Concerto sounded in Symphony Hall, the concert was ably led by a guest conductor (on the earlier occasion, Paavo Berglund), and the pairing was the other huge Shostakovich symphony in the key of C Minor (the Eighth, Opus 65). And when last we heard Vadim Repin here, it was in an electrifying account of the Shostakovich A Minor concerto.
The simplest word for Repin’s relation to the violin, is mastery. He does not make a show of wrestling with the instrument, does not dissipate his energies in the trappings of display; but the sparks fly off the strings. His violin thrills even at a whisper, as in the dulcet entrance at the outset of the Sibelius concerto. And if coordinating the schedules of guest soloist, guest conductor and professional orchestra is a notorious squeeze on the clock, such that rehearsal minutes are precious and few, the surety of the transitions in the concerto, and the sympathy binding Repin, conductor Mark Elder and the orchestra, were all the more impressive. The last movement was an especial delight, Repin finding an appropriately Tchaikovskian balance of grace, and weighted propulsion in what is essentially a Polonaise-fantasy.
The Shostakovich Fourth Symphony, in all its magnificence and unwieldy defiance, is historically a compass with a broken needle: once it pointed to a bold path, which its composer was prevented from promptly or directly pursuing. The young composer was still basking in the well-earned international success of his opera, The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District when he began composing a symphony whose scale would exceed that of his first three symphonies combined; and before he completed work, an unsigned editorial in Pravda (implying endorsement by the very highest officials in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) had dragged his name so thoroughly in the mud, that Shostakovich must have despaired of ever cleansing himself from it.
The Lady Macbeth affair made it clear to Soviet composers that neither the acclaim of the public nor the respect and admiration of one’s professional colleagues meant anything, if the Kremlin were not pleased. And notwithstanding his artistic satisfaction with the piece; nor his pride that here he had written a monumental symphony vindicating the hopes which had attached to him since his First, which was his graduation piece from the Conservatory; Shostakovich came to the agonized decision that this massive Fourth Symphony, which ends with a preternatural whisper as an aftershock to the deafening peals of a massive brass section (four trumpets, eight horns, three trombones and two tubas), and whose third movement begins with the plaintive funeral march of a solo bassoon over a trudging tritone in the double-bass and timpani — such a piece was not music with which to curry official favor.
Shostakovich had finished the Fourth Symphony in April of 1936; and though Fritz Stiedry had tried fitfully to rehearse it with the Leningrad Philharmonic, the composer made the decision – a decision costly to himself, for it meant returning the 300 rubles advance paid to him, and his wife had just borne their first child, Galina, earlier that year – to withdraw the piece from its scheduled 11 December 1936 performance.
A year later, the emotionally charged success of the Fifth Symphony tentatively restored the composer to official favor. Remarked Shostakovich to conductor Boris Khaikin: “I finished the Fifth Symphony fortissimo and in the major. Everyone is saying that it’s an optimistic and life-affirming symphony. I wonder, what would they be saying if I had finished it pianissimo and in the minor.” It was not until a quarter of a century later, in 1961, that Kirill Kondrashin conducted the premiere of the Fourth Symphony, and Khaikin realized the import of the composer’s seemingly glib remark, long years before — for the Fourth Symphony does indeed end pianissimo and in the minor.
Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit, performs works by Martin, Prokofiev, Saint-Saens
Saturday, 9 February 2008 performance reviewed by Karl Henning
Martin, Petite symphonie concertante for harp, harpsichord, piano and two string orchestras
Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, Opus 19
Saint-Saëns, Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Opus 78, Organ Symphony
Ann Hobson Pilot, harp
Mark Kroll, harpsichord
Randall Hodgkinson, piano
Viviane Hagner, violin
James David Christie, organ
The Boston Symphony Orchestra
Charles Dutoit, guest conductor
The programming for the BSO’s 2007-08 season is notable for a variety of reasons; I confess that I am particularly enjoying the fact that this season features a number of works which, for Boston at any rate, have been rarities. The Petite symphonie concertante by Swiss composer Frank Martin is one such, a piece which has been played at Symphony on only three occasions before now, or rather, twice at Symphony and once at Tanglewood. Not surprisingly, Lausanne native Charles Dutoit has been responsible for half these performances of his compatriot’s work.
Frank Martin’s Petite symphonie concertante was commissioned by Paul Sacher (who was also the agent responsible for bringing into being Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for strings, Arthur Honegger’s Symphony No. 4, Deliciae Basilienses, and Lutosawski’s Double Concerto for oboe and harp). Its title suggests a neoclassical bent, and the Allegro sections have a vigor similar to the early Kammermusiken of Hindemith. The soloists are not given flamboyant roles, but the precise interplay of the three is delightfully set off against the string ensembles.
Viviane Hagner found in the Prokofiev First Concerto some sleeves-rolled-up labor, and some rough edges, which are at curious variance with the predominant lyrical quality which Steven Ledbetter in his program notes (for instance) finds in the Concerto. She played well, and musically; nor does one wish to suggest that a piece must be performed in the same way at all times and in all places; indeed, a young performer must be applauded for taking a considered alternate approach to an oft-played work.
With the Symphony Hall organ freshly restored in the summer of 2005, the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony was part of the gala opening concert for the ’05-’06 season. That performance was outstanding; yet this month’s reprise of the piece was even more exciting. And it is a delight to find that the BSO have reclaimed this work for themselves.