2014 Tanglewood reviews

2014 Tanglewood Music Center Fellows video

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.

Andris Nelsons Tanglewood program with Joshua Bell Beethoven’s Fifth

Article by Dave Read

The program at Tanglewood on Sunday July 20, 2014, a mix of the new, the rare, and the familiar, with Andris Nelsons conducting the BSO, and guest soloist Joshua Bell, attracted a very big audience to the Koussevitsky Music Shed on a splendid summer afternoon. It was the fourth and final Tanglewood appearance of the season for Nelsons, whose tenure as BSO Music Director begins in September. From this amateur’s perspective, and judging too from the way the audience responded today and last week, this was a good hire by the masters of the BSO.

The program opened with Christopher Rouse’s Rapture, an eleven minute piece described by the composer as depicting “a progression to an ever more blinding ecstasy.” A former composer-in-residence at Tanglewood, Rouse was called onstage by Nelsons after the orchestra’s performance of this thrilling piece, which is highlighted by very cool timpani passages.

Joshua Bell reprises 1989 Tanglewood debut

Next, Indiana native Joshua Bell performed French composer Edouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, last heard here in 1989, when Bell made his Tanglewood debut. Symphonie espagnole is really a five movement violin concerto (despit it’s whimsical title), and today’s performance manifested the orchestra’s brilliance in the role of accompanist to the violin soloist. Virtuosity across the board: Bell, BSO, and Nelsons.

Today’s concert wasn’t all high-minded seriousness, not that it ever is at Tanglewood – where the demographic is more elastic than at Symphony Hall, with plebs picnicing in close proximity to patricians and many people making their debuts as patrons of an orchestra. They make themselves know by awkward applause at the end of the first movement, before getting schooled by seatmates.

Beethoven Symphony No. 5 at Tanglewood

A soloist of Mr. Bell’s stature and popularity attracts such newcomers to the audience and some of them will become next season’s ssshhhers. Bell and Nelsons themselves were responsible for a bit of fun after the 3rd movement when the violinist paused to tidy his hair and the conductor mimicked him in turn, much to the delight of the throng.

After intermission, the audience’s attention is immediately reclaimed with the four note opening motif of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, probably the most recognizable phrase in the history of art. Maestro Nelsons and the BSO were an organic whole responsible for benefitting the audience with thirty-plus minutes of transcendent beauty. There was not a scintilla of cliche in this performance – it had a freshness and originality that betrayed its age and familiarity. Just as Serge Koussevitsky himself would have expected, having chosen it for the very first program at Tanglewood!

Andris Nelsons era at Tanglewood begins

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!

James Taylor at Tanglewood July 4, 2014

Article by Dave Read

As if the ghost of Paul Revere had gotten loose, with a mind to make mischief in the Berkshires, in the days and hours leading up to James Taylor’s 4th of July concert at Tanglewood, a quiet rumor rose to a dull roar that a British(er) were coming – to wit, Sir Paul McCartney would make a special guest appearance.

That would be a reunion of the former Beatle and the first artist signed to the beatles’ Apple records. The anicipation built and built during the concert, as Taylor made 3 or 4 references to his lucky days in London, where he auditioned for McCartney and George Harrison while the Beatles were at work on the White Album. In fact, he began the show with the very audition song Something in the Way She Moves! But it never happened, and I don’t think anybody was disappointed. (McCartney did made an appearance, via video, at Taylor’s 60th birthday celebration here six years ago.)

It was another sold-out Tanglewood gig for Taylor, who appeared fit as a fiddle after taking last year off from touring to concentrate on the latter part of the singer-songwriter job description. He performed one new song tonight that’ll appear on an album eventually – Today, Today, Today. The balance of his typically generous setlist was familiar, including: Handy Man, Fire and Rain, Up on the Roof, Sweet Baby James, You’ve Got a Friend, Buddy Holly’s Everyday. Over the course of the nearly three hour show (including encores), everybody in the band and vocal quartet got the spotlight. Michael Landau, Luis Conte, Walt Fowler, Andrea Zonn, Kate Markowitz, Arnold McCuller, David Lasley, Larry Goldings, Steve Gadd, Lou Marini, Jimmy Johnson. His wife Kim and son Henry joined the vocalists for a couple numbers, too.

2014 A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

With a bevy of harmonious beauties in tow, and bluesman Keb Mo, Garrison Keillor returned to the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood for the 15th year in a row. This is a case where familiarity breeds competition and comparison. Audience members were heard bragging about being at the 1st Tanglewood show, or having their greeting read by Keillor at last year’s. We even overheard a debate on the lawn over the relative merits of Wailin Jennys, The DiGiallonardo Sisters, each of whom have made several appearances and both today.

Pre-show serenade for Tanglewood picnickers

Longest encore in radio show business

And knowing a late June evening in the Berkshires had to be savored, he stretched the show until every moment of daylight had been exhausted. There’s just a quiet moment on stage when the broadcast ends at 8PM; the applause builds steadily, evincing the audience’s appetite for more, which gets fulfilled, in ample measure. Today, Garrison and company kept the party going until after nine. They improvised an impressive setlist, including such audience favorites and sing along standards as Going to the Chapel, Brown-Eyed Girl, Sweet Caroline, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Honky Tonk Woman, You’ve Got a Friend, and Amazing Grace.

It was a beautiful day in the Berkshires – what they used to call “chamber of commerce” weather; for more, do visit the American Public Media do a great job maintaining audio and video archives of A Prairie Home Companion.