Article by Dave Read

When I organized my Tanglewood calendar, the chief reason I selected this program was because it featured the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (TFC), which I have come to know and enjoy by way of their annual appearance on the season finale program of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. And so the TFC is associated with the solemn feelings engendered by that work, all that heavy stuff about eternal brotherhood.

But instead of getting a profundity fix today, a giant glowing happy face got slapped on my soul! You would think something called Va, pensiero (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) would be doleful, melancholy, yet it had the opposite effect on me. Preceded by the Overture to Nabucco, which includes melodies from it, Va, pensiero was as thoroughly satisfying as any musical performance I’ve attended. Whatever Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was intending to convey, joy was what I felt.

This performance had such an immediate and sustained effect on me that I began to suspect that I had heard it over and over a lifetime ago, as if Joy had been inculcated while these melodies looped – had been embedded in me like treachery had been in the Manchurian candidate!

Triumphal Scene (Act II, scene 2) from Aida

Of course what followed was more of the same, the Triumphal Scene (Act II, scene 2) from Aida which Verdi composed some thirty years later. If I hadn’t just heard Va, pensiero, I may well have had a similarly ecstatic response to these selections from Aida. As it happened, a wonderful afternoon just got even better. Representing less than one-fifth of Aida, the Triumphal Scene nevertheless delivers a full measure of enjoyment, and even in today’s concert setting, was visually appealing, trios of trumpeters flanking the orchestra.

Conductor Jacques Lacombe and pianist Gabriela Montero

Opening the program, which was conducted by Canadian Jacques Lacombe in his BSO and Tanglewood debuts, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with soloist Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero. Marked by familiar melodies, we listened to it while the strolling the lawn, the better to enjoy the singular Tanglewood experience.

Article by Dave Read

New Tanglewood Tales: Backstage with Rising Artists is a series of videos spotlighting the professional and personal lives of six Fellows from the 2014 class of the Tanglewood Music Center, the summer home in the Berkshires of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The musicians will talk about their backgrounds, how they got to Tanglewood, and what they hope to accomplish in their classical music careers. Here are Episodes 1 and 2:

participating Tanglewood Music Center Fellows

Tanglewood Music Center Fellows featured in “New Tanglewood Tales: Backstage with Rising Artists” are

• Karina Canellakis (conductor);
• Jeffrey DeRoche (percussion);
• Conor McDonald (baritone);
• Clare Elizabeth Monfredo (cello);
• Masha Popova (flute);
• Jacob Shack (viola).

This behind-the-scenes documentary will chronicle the lives of these TMC Fellows as they leave their homes for Tanglewood; meet and interact with their colleagues in the Tanglewood Music Center; participate in orchestral, vocal, and chamber music concerts on the stages of Ozawa Hall and Shed; prepare music for the Festival of Contemporary Music; and attend and participate in master classes with BSO members, TMC faculty, and visiting artists, including some of the most prominent performing artists of our time.

“New Tanglewood Tales” will also include footage of the Fellows at work with some of the world’s most prestigious conductors, including BSO Music Director Designate Andris Nelsons, who will lead Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in excerpts from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier on July 12, as part of a gala program that will also feature the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing works by Rachmaninoff and Ravel. In addition to these many and varied musical activities, this new web series will also offer viewers a glimpse at the personal lives of these Fellows as they navigate the world between being a student and a professional musician.

“New Tanglewood Tales: Backstage with Rising Artists” features Susan Dangel, as producer and director; Dick Bartlett as editor; and Russ Fisher as videographer and sound engineer.

about the Tanglewood Music Center Fellowship Program

The Tanglewood Music Center Fellowship Program is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer academy for advanced musical study. The TMC offers an intensive schedule of study and performance for emerging professional instrumentalists, singers, conductors, and composers who have completed most of their formal training in music. The Tanglewood Music Center, which started as the Berkshire Music Center in 1940, will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2015.

July 13, 2014, 2014 Article by Dave Read – The era of Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood got underway with an All-Dvorák program featuring violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, Nelsons’ first concert here since being named the fifteenth Music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, starting with the upcoming fall season at Symphony Hall.

As if it were merely another day at work, Maestro Nelsons jogged up to the podium and summoned the orchestra to action right away. Opening with The Noonday Witch, a Symphonic poem being performed by the BSO for the first time, allowed focus to be on this new union between the 35 year old Nelsons and the 133 year old BSO, rather than on listening to a familiar score being played again. It wasn’t long before they seemed familiar, as if conductor and orchestra were all of a piece.

And ready to accompany Anne-Sophie Mutter on Dvoráks’ Violin Concerto. Described as being “fiendishly diffcult,” as performed tonight, it was a flawless delight, evoking an eruption of applause from the audience. But the happiest people in the Shed were Ms. Muter and Maestro Nelsons, who beamed the brightest of smiles to each other before embracing and taking their bows.

Andris Nelsons and Anne-Sophie Mutter at Tanglewod

They both were on the program two years ago that celebrated Tanglewood’s 75th anniversary. Ms. Muter, who made her international debut in 1976, has recorded Dvorák’s Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, for release in October.

Mr. Nelsons’ conducting looked fluid and mobile. There was a moment toward the end of the Violin concerto, with Ms. Muter at rest, when he almost stepped off the podium, crouching and reaching toward the violins to draw forth a soft passage. He left footprints and handprints all over the podium, like an animal marking territory. Here’s hoping he enjoys a long and happy occupation of this place!