Tanglewood concert reviews

By Dave Read, July 26, 2026 performance – On the Tanglewood campus in the heart of the Berkshires, Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelson led a program of compositions by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with Himari soloing on the Mozart concerto, in her BSO and Tanglewood debut.

To an unschooled audience member, such as myself, Mozart’s first and fifth violin concerti, presented here Friday and today, may as well be step-siblings. The fifth appears bold and determined while the first seems pensive and dreamy. Not surprisingly, the soloists for Friday evening and this afternoon are as different in appearance as are the works they performed. (Undoubtedly, each would have been brilliant on either concerto; I simply enjoy the double contrast between the compositions and the soloists.)

Himari, born 2011 in Japan, was a poised presence whose performance was the equal of the orchestra’s in the Mozart work known for its grace and charm, as the progrm notes indicate. During an extended passage when the soloist is silent, Himari stood still, her arms at her sides and violin tucked under her right shoulder, as if waiting at the bus stop. When the score called for it, she was animated, toe-tapping, and bow-flourishing. So grows the world of music, now with another elite violinist, one who seems perfectly suited to the role.

The program began with a composition, Gambit, composed in 1998 by Esa-Pekka Salonen as an exchange of birthday gift with a fellow composer. It is an exciting piece, noted for tumbling strings, wooden percussion, mallets, and woodwinds. Salonen, curator of this year’s Festival of Contemporary Music, introduced Gambit from the stage.

As on Friday, today’s program concluded with Tchaikovesky, Symphony No. 5 in E minor. As Tanglewood itself represents the fulfillment of Serge Koussevitzky’s ambitious dream, so too the work of another Russian composer seems the fulfillment of the Berkshire’s bucolic promise. Air-light warbling birds aflutter in the dense and resonant woods.

By Dave Read, July 24, 2026 performance – On the Tanglewood campus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, music director Andris Nelsons conducted Mozart’s Violin concerto No. 5 in A, with Augustan Hadelich as soloist, followed by Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 in D.

Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 is an especially beautiful piece of music, which sweeps an audience away in a flood of sonorous gold. The concerto opens as if an eternal aural flame has been re-kindled, when the soloist utters an authoritative, brief credenza that will reappear several times in the half-hour life of the performance. Tonight, although the program was quintessentially classical, the presence of the virtuoso Hadelich added an element from the world of jazz, since the credenzas performed were his own improvisations on Mozart’s score.

Artist-in-residence this season with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he plays a 1744 violin by Guiseppe Guarneri del Gesu; imagine the ocean of joy that has flowed from that hand-crafted instrument over the course of nearly three hundred years. His encore was his own arrangement of Schumann’s Träumerei from Kinderszenen, Op. 15.

Maestro Nelsons and his orchestra united as a force of nature during the Tchaikovsky symphony, filling the Shed and environs with a splendor of sound. It is one of life’s simple joys to press the mental “do not disturb” button to bask and revel in wave after wave of musical sense.

By Dave Read, July 19, 2026 performance – Today’s matinee concert in the Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, music director Andris Nelsons conducting, was the epitome of what a concert should be; the appearance of rose boutonnieres on stage and throughout the audience a reminder of the divided society we inhabit.

The concert opened with Symphony No. 22 in E flat, The Philosopher, composed in 1764 by Franz Jopseph Hayden, and only played once before by the BSO, fifty years ago, at Tanglewood. With only one other performance in the orchestra’s 145 year history, this is an example the programming philosophy that resulted in the Stand with Andris movement, symbolized by the red rose. Musicians such as Maestro Nelsons work in service to the Muse, not to the diverse communities that buy concert tickets. That is the misalignment that precipitated the fraught tempest in the BSO’s teapot.

Out of alignment are the Trustees, whose mission is to serve the muse-devoted artists of the orchestra, not Mammon, already well-served by the Boston Pops, as well as by the whole gamut of pop music. You can serve Mammon or you can serve the Muse, but you cannot do both things at once.

Maestro Nelsons is a compelling visual presence; his movements on the podium make it seem as if the score uncoils from him during the performance. The first thing we noticed during his initial Tanglewood performances 13 years ago was how often he reached back to the podium during performances. He was setting roots in the Shed, but not deep enough, it seems, to withstand uprooting by the bean counters in Boston.

The interplay between two virtuosos, pianist Danill Trifonov and BSO trumpeter Thomas Rolfs made the Shostokovich concerto especially entertaining. That such disparate objects as the piano and the trumpet can so contrast and compliment one another lays at the innate joy of symphonic music.

To conclude the program with Beethoven’s life-affirming second symphony, as may have been said before, is procisely why places like Tanglewood exist.

By Dave Read, July 16, 2026 performance – The augmented Boston Camarata performed a program called, FREE AMERICA, Songs of Resistance and Rebellion for a sparse audience at Ozawa Hall, on the Tanglewood campus in the Berkshires. Led by France native Anne Azema and assisted by three fifers and a drummer, the ensemble delivered a beautifully arrayed survey of the songs and sounds of the American revolution.

The Boston Camerata was founded at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, during the apparent peace and quiet of 1954, when the new field of early music was emerging here and across Europe. Tonight’s performance was no staid museum piece, however, but a spirited re-animation of a varied and turbulent period.

The audience were invited several times to sing along and acquitted itself well. Early in the program, which Ms. Azema said was arranged into chapters, was Yankee Doodle, or the Lexington March. Perhaps the most affecting number was Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel, sung by bass baritone Philip Bullock, whose forceful performance temporarily transformed staid Ozawa Hall into a zealous temple.

Especially notable tonight also is drummer Kyle Forsthoff, who delighted the audience with a couple of turns on bones and spoons, which must be considered the most democratic of all instruments, (even if they are not easy to play well).

Tonight’s repertoire has roots as diverse as the nation they celebrate, ranging from the Hebrew Bible, Scottish taverns, slave quarters, and Shaker colonies. They comprise the first volume of American folk music, even if the music industry has mismanaged our national legacy, which is why such institutions as the Boston Camerata and the Tanglewood Music Center are so important.

By Dave Read, July 14, 2026 performance – Trombone Shorty and Ziggy Marley took possession of the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood tonight, the venue so recently under the dominion of Mozart, Mahler, Brahms, et al. And so we’re reminded of the alchemy that makes music serve both Mammon and the Muse, as either popular or classical art.

Whereas seduction is an essential element of most music, with listeners invited into realms of contrasting themes and rhythms, pop music often dispenses with the formalities and commands your attention from the downbeat. Trombone Shorty hits the ground running, a hip hop or funky rhythm throbbing aggressively. Dozens of trombone, trumpet, sax solos, and a few guitar runs comprise the show. It purely performative, a demonstration of amplification without ever feeling like an exchange between artist and audience – despite the twenty or so times Mr. Shorty dropped Tanglewood into his stream of verbiage or lyric.

It was fun but could have been so much more. These are highly skilled musicians but the performance overwhelmed their artistry with maximum volume devoted to a minimum of subtlety or variety.

Ziggy Marley dialed it back to a noticeable degree but didn’t take to the stage until thirty minutes after Trombone Shorty’s ninety minute set. That makes for too long a night – it’s sub-optimal to prepare for an evening of rhythmically fluid reggae music with an hour and a half of hip hop and neo-funk. Each headliner is a gifted musician and generous entertainer but something is lost, not added, when they are presented is succession.

Wouldn’t it be more fun to have Trombone Shorty headline a bill that opens with one or two jazz-centric emerging artists and on another date, present Ziggy Marley atop a bill that includes emerging artists of his ilk?