Tanglewood concert reviews

By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, August 16, 2024 performance – Another felicitous program choice makes this concert especially memorable. Guest conductor Samy Rachid led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Prokofiev’s Violin concerto No. 1 in D, Opus 19, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. The decision to open the program with a brief “Symphonic Picture,” Dawn in the Field, by Yevgeny Svetlanov (1928-2002), amounted to the ideal appetizer for a sumptuous concert.

How wonderful, at dusk on an overcast day, to be musically transported to dawn in the field; in my case, the field was near the sea, and there were crickets. What a painter was Maestro Svenlanov, how lucky are we Tanglewoodies, to attend the BSO’s first performance of his music.

Prokofiev met us in whatever field we’d wandered to, and found us wide awake and ready for the celebrated violin prodigy, Midori, and her performance of his rather quiet concerto. Besides being a tour de force for the violins and bigger strings, this concerto demonstrates the musical value of silence, of the many tiny increments of space that make the numberless notes of a composition add up to the sounds that tickle us, that rouse or soothe us, that sometimes make us burst into applause.

For us in the Berkshires, Midori is doubly twinned to Leonard Bernstein. The violin soloist’s Tanglewood debut catapulted her to fame as had Bernstein’s conducting debut, which was done without rehearsal, as a last minute substitute for an ill conductor.

At age 14, on a bill conducted by Bernstein in 1985, while performing the conductor’s Serenade, Midori twice broke a sting, each time calmly borrowing a nearby violin to keep the performance on track. Music lovers are well-advised to add a measure of incense to their Calliope altars, in gratitude for calling our attention to Bernstein and Midori way sooner than ordinary circumstances would have.

The decision to invite Samy Rachid as guest conductor was just as smart, as he added a dynamic visual element, besides eliciting such a beautiful performance from the orchestra and soloist. As quiet and sombre as was the Prokofiev concerto, Tchaikovsky’s symphony was loud and rousing – not volume-turned-to-10 loud, just so loud as to make you wish there was more of it. As tired as an old man gets late at night, tonight I wanted to listen a little longer before returning to the noisy world.

By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, August 11, 2024 performance – In advance of a concert program that features compositions of Mozart and Mahler, the anticipation is for an auditory experience, the visual aspect being incidental. Thanks to both guest conductor and soloist, however, today’s concert, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood delighted the vision almost as much as it awed the hearing.

Making their BSO debuts were conductor James Gaffigan, a 2003 alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center, and soprano Elana Villalón. Maestro Gaffigan’s emphatic, dramatic style was neatly balance by Ms. Villalón’s subtle expressiveness.

But, of course, it is the dependable excellence of the orchestra that affords conductor and soloist their opportunity. Before today, my mental shortcut description of Mahler’s music is that it is a density – a thing of heavy substance. Today, the BSO disabused me of that notion, with beautiful and delicate sounds from the woodwinds.

Even though I was certain that I had attained the summit of listening pleasure during Friday’s program, I see that I’ve been returned to my natural state of uncertainty. Such is the great gift of proximity to Tanglewood – if you keep attending concerts, your standard of excellence keeps increasing. (Perhaps we’ll discover that perfection is a mirage?)

By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, August 9, 2024 performance – Absent as nature has been from the positive side of promotion of outdoors entertainment in the Berkshires this Tanglewood season, on a rainy night, near the end of a rainy week, a small audience collected in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, where a concert of music was performed that sounded as good to me as if Calliope, Muse of Music, were in the house.

Empty seats in the three rows ahead gave me an unobstructed view of the Kirill Gerstein’s hands as he performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Opus 30. During one particularly busy passage, his hands were a blur, like you’d see in a Roadrunner cartoon. But the sound produced was anything but a blur – it was an increment of beauty that flowed into and out of the beautiful ocean of sound that pours from the orchestra.

After another passage, he soundlessly swept his hand along the keyboard, as a rider may pat his charger after a gallop. It is in the nature of nature to pull off such tricks as to equate a single instrument with several score of instruments, but that is what the concerto is all about. And this one of Rachmaninoff is considered to present pianists with the ultimate challenge, met so well tonight by Mr. Gerstein.

After intermission, the performance of a rarely performed piece was followed by the performance of a veritable war horse – Igor Stravinsky’s The Right of Spring, Pictures from pagan Russia. The composition that saw a Paris audience succumb to mob behavior at its premier has become a familiar, welcome presence to symphony audiences.

Of course, that says more about the hoi polloi than it does about music or musicians. In general, people buy tickets to performances that will be pretty much like what yesterday’s performance was. In general, the people ain’t anywhere near as interested in the avant-garde as they were in new coke.

It is the job of the organization that exists to support the BSO to bridge the gap between the avant-garde, eternal province of artists, and people in search of an entertaining distraction from the omnipresent breaking-news-scape.

Historically, that job in American was done by organizations dominated and run by republicans. Since the republican party has followed its nose for profit straight into the waste stream of consumerism, the arts in America are in transition, as is everything else. Naturally, the arts in America never will be without volunteers ready, willing, and able to make the professionals get the job done right!

By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, August 4, 2024 performance – The same composer featured on today’s program in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood also dominates the program that will conclude the season in three weeks, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). That’s quite an accomplishment for someone who only published nine symphonies. While Tanglewood marks the end of the season with the beloved Symphony No. 9, today’s program included the least performed and most complained about of the 712 pieces he composed that were not symphonies.

Beethoven composed the rarely performed Concerto in C, for piano, violin, and cello, Opus 54 not for the joy of musical composition alone, but so that his patron (and piano student) would have a piece he was able to play. The addition of two more solo parts balanced the work by the relative complexity of the violin and cello parts. Today, the cello part of the triple concerto is considered to be the most difficult in the repertoire. Steven Isserlis was the cello soloist, with Joshua Bell on violin and Kirill Gerstein on piano, with Alan Gilbert conducting the BSO.

After intermission, on a sunny afternoon that followed a thunderstormy morning, was Symphony No. 4 in B-flat, Opus 60. Would that the weather didn’t so limit the audience, because if place/ambience play a part in the enjoyment of music, then Tanglewood is tailor-made for the presentation of Beethoven, no matter how good he sounds elsewhere.

By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, August 2, 2024 performance – Boston Pops conductor emeritus John Williams was unable to attend the concert he prepared for performance in the Koussevitsky Music Shed. In his stead, David Newman joined guest conductor Ken-David Masur for a concert of music composed for Hollywood and TV. Maestro Newman is the son of famed composer Alfred Newman, whom Williams met at 23, to begin a lifetime friendship with the Newman family.

Half of the ten items on the program were composed by Maestro Williams, the balance by Korngold, North, Mancini, Bernstein (Lenny, not Elmer), and Raskin.

Early on, Maestro Masur, son of famed New York Philharmonic music director Kurt Masur, whose finale with the New Yorkers was here in the Shed in 2002, told us that Williams wants us to understand that film music is a genre in its infancy, compared to ancient classical music.

If so, then Tanglewood’s own John Williams qualifies for progenitor status in the emerging genre. Another way to look at it is to consider movie music the place where the art of orchestral composition meets the entertainment of motion pictures. Entertainment is like fastfood – it has to be the same in natural, upscale Nantucket as it is in beautiful, downtown Burbank.

The production of movies and TV is so expensive that financiers seldom back experimentation, the essential element of every work of art. Financed projects that produce big profits are likely to produce sequels, even prequels, so that no profit is left unharvested.

Tonight’s program includes a photo that shows the bust of Aaron Copland, in the Formal Garden at the eastern edge of the Tanglewood campus. It is yet another gift to us all from Maestro Williams, who already stands alongside Koussevitsky, Copland, Bernstein, and Ozawa in Tanglewood’s Inner Circle.

By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, July 28, 2024 performance – When Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons opened the second part of the program that would close the orchestra’s weekend celebration of the 150th anniversary of Serge Koussevitsky’s birth, he made a conductor’s decision that, in my mind, created a new work by the merging of two discrete compositions.

He cued the orchestra to begin Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms before the audience had time to applaud Randall Thompson’s Alleluia, which they were poised to greet with the great ovation it deserved. Composed at Koussevitsky’s request, for the 1940 inauguration of the Tanglewood (nee Berkshire) Music Center, it has been performed by every class since, at their opening exercises. Now held in Ozawa Hall, free and open to the public, they were held this year during the afternoon of the BSO’s opening night concert.

The six minute piece was performed after intermission, after the audience had already been thrilled by Aaron Copland’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, with soloist Paul Lewis. Copland stands near Koussevitsky in the inner circle of the Tanglewood pantheon. Today’s program includes a photo of the Copland bust that was commissioned by Boston Pops conductor emeritus John Williams, for placement in the formal garden at the eastern end of the sprawling Tanglewood campus.

My introduction to the piece came during Ozawapalooza, the weekend of farewell to Seiji Ozawa at the conclusion of his 29 year BSO tenure. On that sun-drenched but star-filled Sunday afternoon in the Shed, Maestro Ozawa led the massive audience in the most moving sing-along of all time. Souvenir copies of the sheet music had been distributed to the audience.