Tanglewood concert reviews

Alison Krauss at Tanglewood June 19, 2018

Article updated June 20, 2018 by Dave Read

The original iteration of the Berkshires as a playground for the obscenely rich was during the last quarter of the 19th century, when it became an autumnal retreat for robber barons and other scallywags who’d grown bored of their Newport and Adirondack estates. In terms of man-made seasons, that was it – the Berkshires’ season was late summer/early fall. The Berkshires today, its essential natural resource polluted in perpetuity by G.E. (the corporate criminal kicked off the Dow Jones just this week), scrambles to make a go of things by converting the arts into a commodity.

One hopes this conversion is less harmful than GE’s conversion of the Housatonic River was. But one bit of harm is the spawning of the awkward phrase “shoulder season.” It seems that where a segment of the local population that otherwise would’ve been engaged in corporate communications and other aspects of internal paper-pushing now toil in the obscenely oxymoronic “cultural economy.” As one who traffics in language, I cannot help but wonder if a segment of a shoulder season would be called a “clavical week?”

…on the shoulders of giants

That’s why metaphor is best left alone by people essentially talking business, because if we imagine Tanglewood as something with shoulders, then we see something hideously ugly – one shoulder comprised of fifteen concerts, the other only one. We know PCBs to be endocrine-disrupting, so we’ll have to find somebody else than GE to blame for this skeletal anomaly.

There’s no more beautiful venue in the world than Tanglewood, regardless the season – or metaphor. And speaking of beautiful, Alison Krauss, accompanied by remnats of Union Station and members of the Cox family, regaled a handsome audience on a quintessential June evening with a ninety minute show that amounted to a sampler of her stunning career.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

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Tanglewood tickets and box office information

Tickets for the 2018 Tanglewood season available through Tanglewood’s website, www.tanglewood.org, SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office at 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA.

Getting around the Tanglewood campus

The Tanglewood campus, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center comprises several hundred acres in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge. It is the location of the Koussevitsky Music Shed and Ozawa Hall, where hundreds of thousands attend concerts and a variety of events, including picnics. We always advise new visitors to arrive early and take their daily walking exercise wandering the beautiful Tanglewood grounds. This dynamic map of the Tanglewood grounds includes photos and information for such points of interest as Aaron Copland Library, Highwood Manor House, The Glass House, and The Lion’s Gate.

Beethoven’s Ninth closes 2017 Tanglewood season

August 28, 2017 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

The honeymoon between Music Director Andris Nelsons, born 1978, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, born 1881, is over; their marriage was on full display for the 2017 season finale at Tanglewood, where they produced as beautiful performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as you could imagine. With four soloists, and the estimable Tanglewood Festival Chorus, with new conductor James Burton, the Koussevitsky Music Shed, and the enormous audience, combined to become the locus of the music world, for one splendid late summer afternoon in the Berkshires, where autumn alone is sufficient to follow a summer of such splendid sounds.

During the moment between movements, Maestro Nelsons stood still, his hands on the podium, as if connected to a charging station. After all, he is the only one of the 200+ musicians on stage with a role on every note in the hour-long composition. In that vein, the TFC deserve extra plaudits for their impossible stillness the forty plus minutes they are in place, but not singing. This marvelous musical tableau is completed by them.

Under Nelsons’ direction, today’s performance, perhaps the fifteenth time we’ve heard the BSO play Beethoven’s Ninth at Tanglewood, filled out the character we’d perceived when contemplating the great composer. It lifted some feeling that Beethoven hadn’t attained the full measure of satisfaction owed a hard working man. Now, I can imagine the joy he felt upon first hearing its performance.

Housatonic at Stockbridge, Charles Ives

The Housatonic at Stockbridge from Three Places in New England by Charles Ives was a sublime five minute meditative sketch made especially poignant because it depicts a locale on the sinuous river a few miles away as the composer felt on his honeymoon there. The conductor looked like an angler patiently working a fly under an overhang, while a light drizzle resolved in a thunderstorm.

Aug. 27, 2017 Sunday, 2:30pm

Koussevitzky Music Shed – Tanglewood, Lenox, MA

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Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Katie Van Kooten, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
Russell Thomas, tenor
John Relyea, bass-baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
James Burton, conductor

IVES “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” from Three Places in New England
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9 (65 min)

Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

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Getting around the Tanglewood campus

Tanglewood Takes Flight with Mass Audubon at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary

August 2016 Tanglewood program review by Dave Read

Tanglewood Takes Flight; Celebration of Birds and Music with Mass Audubon at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary is a collaboration between two organizations that span the town of Lenox, a novel merging of their missions. The program is a most obvious idea to anyone who has attended concerts at Tanglewood, where birds are likely to sit in with the house band. We attended “Program lll” Saturday at 7 a.m. with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Piano Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center performing these piecs from Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux: Le Chopard des Alpes, Le Loriot, La Buse varible, and Le Merle bleu.

Yellow warblers and red-eyed vireos

Immediately afterwards the audience was assigned to groups for hikes in the sanctuary, led by bird experts. Our guide, Walt Peterson, called out a yellow warbler, to everyone’s amazement and, among many other deeds of ornithological wizadry, he identified the song or the red-eyed vireo, to my delight because it seems to be the song I hear everytime I hike hereabouts.

Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

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Getting around the Tanglewood campus

Tanglewood on Parade 2017

August 2, 2016 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

Tanglewood on Parade is one of those events that qualifies as the coolest thing in the world, an event you’d make a point of attending, if you knew enough to. It is an all-day celebration of all things classically musical, in a variety of venues spread amid the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s million-acre campus in the Berkshires. You could catch two full symphonic concerts plus several recitals, while picnicking in the company of true picnic hobbyists, all on the same nickel.

Tchaikovsky’s simple and triumphant 1812 Overture caps the Gala Concert – the lithe Keith Lockhart conducting a massive ensemble combining the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, including live mortar rounds while the Overture climaxes, followed by a twenty minute fireworks display over nearby Stockbridge Bowl.

Even the musically challenged, people who don’t know an allegro from a concertante, can witness it once, then again annually for a decade or more and still retain his utter naivete. The place hath charms that soothe even the rustic’s breast.

Tanglewood on Parade Concert Program

Tuesday, August 1, at 8pm
THE GREGORY E. BULGER FOUNDATION CONCERT
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA
BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
CHARLES DUTOIT, MORITZ GNANN, KEITH LOCKHART,
KEN-DAVID MASUR, BRAMWELL TOVEY, and
JOHN WILLIAMS, conductors
GARRICK OHLSSON, piano
DAWN UPSHAW, soprano

COPLAND Fanfare for the Common Man
FELLOWS OF THE TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER,
KEN-DAVID MASUR conducting

COPLAND Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
Andante sostenuto—
Molto moderato—Allegro assai
GARRICK OHLSSON, piano
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA,
BRAMWELL TOVEY conducting

KODÁLY Suite from Háry János
Prelude. The Fairy Tale Begins Viennese Musical Clock Song
The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon
Intermezzo
Entrance of the Emperor and his Court
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA,
CHARLES DUTOIT conducting

INTERMISSION

MENDELSSOHN Overture, The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave), Opus 26
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA,
MORITZ GNANN conducting

GERSHWIN / KERN (arr. Nelson Riddle)
“Love is Here to Stay”
“I Won’t Dance”
DAWN UPSHAW, soprano
BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
KEITH LOCKHART conducting

John WILLIAMS Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
A New Beginning from Minority Report
Throne Room & Finale from Star Wars
BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
JOHN WILLIAMS conducting

TCHAIKOVSKY 1812 Overture, Opus 49
TMC ORCHESTRA and
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
KEITH LOCKHART conducting

Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

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Getting around the Tanglewood campus

2016 Opening week at Tanglewood

Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

For the first time in seventeen years, our Tanglewood season got underway with James Taylor and his All-Star Band, instead of with Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion. During Keillor’s run, which began in the last days of the Clinton Administration and ended at the same point in Obama’s, one could always count on a refreshing dose of patriotism, particularly during pre- and post-show singalongs.

James Taylor and his All-Star Band play tanglewood, July 4, 2017. — James Taylor and his All-Star Band play tanglewood, July 4, 2017; Hilary Scott photo.

James Taylor delivered our dose this year, when he opened his July 4th show with a plaintive rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, which had the vast lawn audience on its feet, maybe not at attention, but clearly sharing a moment of quiet reflection. It was nice and easy, in typical James Taylor fashion, no polemics, just a respectful reading of the anthem of the nation that remains mankind’s best chance for a fully realized life.

Followed immediately by another in a long line of outstanding rock n’ roll performances by Taylor and his band, nearly annual events here since the millenium. It’s not unusual for him to have a special musical guest in tow, from Taylor Swift to Carole King, and this time Bonnie Raitt took the stage for a couple of numbers, including a searing, soaring rendition of Johnny B.Goode, the anthem of the nation of rock ‘n roll, written by founding father Chuck Berry, who died in March.

Another perspective of Keillor’s Tanglewood run is that it opened during the Music Directorship of Seiji Ozawa, spanned James Levine’s, and concluded during Andris Nelsons’, who returned to the Koussevitsky Music Shed July 7th to open the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection.

Andris Nelsons leads BSO and TFC in performance of Mahler Symphony No. 2, Resurrection

In his third sason as Music Director, Meestro Nelsons stode purposely to the podium Friday night, following the slow, row-by-row assembling of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus on the risers behind the orchestra, cued the austere opening measures of the piece that will develop into an overwhelming, opulent musical experience. He is a compelling figure, marshalling the forces arrayed before him from the podium which he occupies with a deliberateness not seen from dozens of oher conductors we’ve watched here.

This performance was folllowed by several curtain-calls and an ovation that lasted ten minutes or more. Here is a link to the BSO’s video podcast on Mahler 2. To read a “detailed explanation of how Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 is a heart-shattering work of genius,” including video clips and animated gifs, follow this link.

The BSO customarily sees to it that the opening night program is “Gala” worthy; beyond ticking off that box, this year they’ve also adorned the season with a sort of symmetry, since the season-closing Beethoven’s 9th is as thoroughly soul-stirring as the Mahler, both concluding with orchestral and choral paroxysms.

Andris Nelsons conducts Beethoven’s Ninth at Tanglewood

August 28, 2016 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

Andris Nelsons conducted Beethoven’s Ninth at Tanglewood August 28, 2016, in a program that included Aaron Copland’s Quiet City, which gave the Boston Symphony Orchestra the opportunity to bid farewell to trumpeter Thomas Rolfs and English hornist Robert Sheena. Before proceeding with Beethoven’s beloved symphony, almost always programmed to close the BSO’s Tanglewood season, music director Nelsons addressed the audience, going on at unexpected length, to voice the organization’s gratitude and best wishes to the departing players, but also to speak of his excitement with the day’s program and with the setting, expressing his gratitude to the audience and inviting them this fall to Symphony Hall in Boston “another great place to make music.” He said also that he is looking forward to returning to the Berkshires next year for the the first two and last two weeks of the Tanglewood season – news that was announced today.

Andris Nelsons addresses audience before leading BSO, Tanglewood Festival chorus, and soloists in Beethoven's Ninth at Tanglewood, Aug. 28, 2016; Hilary Scott photo. — Andris Nelsons addresses audience before leading BSO, Tanglewood Festival chorus, and soloists in Beethoven’s Ninth at Tanglewood, Aug. 28, 2016; Hilary Scott photo.

It feels as if Maestro Nelsons is settling in, and perhaps we’re at the beginning of another long tenure, to close out the ferquently unsettled interregnum since the departure of Seiji Ozawa during the 1st Geo. W. Bush administration. Last month, the BSO announced the extension of Nelsons’ contract through the 2021-2022 season, with an evergreen clause for automatic renewal. Today’s concert ratified the wisdom of that bit of business, as the performance was brilliant, with the audience erupting in applause at the glorious conclusion – leading the ovation from his seat in Sec. 3 was another Tanglewood stalwart, James Taylor.

Andris Nelsons is kinetic sculpture on the podium

So soon after determining that the greatest concert we’ve attended was last week’s performance of Aida, which itself was close on the heels of 5 star shows by The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma and the Chick Corea Trio, it’s time to recognize that such absolutes cannot obtain here, at Tanglewood, where breathtaking excellence may be acheived more than once, even a few times in a single month!

Besides the ineffably beautiful music Maestro Nelsons inspires the orchestra and vocalists to produce, he also becomes a work of kinetic sculpture on the podium – balletic, athletic, military, and architectural by turns. And I’ll wade all the way into a metaphorical morass to state that observing his baton gestures close up is like getting to watch the stitchery at the same time as you’re marveling at a beautiful tapestry.

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Thomas Rolfs, trumpet
Robert Sheena, English horn
Rachel Willis-Sørensen, soprano
Ruxandra Donose, mezzo-soprano
Joseph Kaiser, tenor
Wilhelm Schwinghammer, bass
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
COPLAND Quiet City
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9

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Berkshies transportation

For how to get to the Berkshires and public transportation within Berkshire county, see this page: Amtrak and Peter Pan bus schedules.

Tanglewood tickets and box office information

Tickets for Tanglewood concerts are available through Tanglewood’s website, www.tanglewood.org, SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office at 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA. Download the 2018 Tanglewood season brochure.