Archives for August 2013

Yo Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo Show at Tanglewood

August 15, 2013 performance by Dave Read

If Tanglewood were simply Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, its Tanglewood Music Center and eight or nine weeks of classical music performed by the BSO and their various guest soloists and conductors, we Berkshires locals would have plenty to be grateful for. But it is so much more, for so many reasons, not least of which is that Yo Yo Ma claims it as a sort of home for his seemingly boundless musical explorations. Incidentally, he also has an actual home in the Berkshires. (Goat Rodeo Show at Tanglewood photo: Hilary Scott).

His latest musical trip led to the Goat Rodeo Sessions, the 2011 album he recorded with bsssist Edgar Meyer, fiddler Stuart Duncan, and mandolinist Chris Thile, which won Grammys for Best Folk and Best Engineered non-classical. Both the album and tonight’s show featured singer Aoife O’Donovan, of Crooked Still and Sometymes Why. She reprised No One But You, Here and Heaven, from the album and added a stunning rendition of Bob Dylan’s Farewell, Angelina.

Everybody but Mr. Ma took turns on other instruments; Meyer played piano on Franz and the Eagle, and No One But You; Thile, whose singing blended nicely with Ms. O’Donovan’s, also played fiddle and guitar; Duncan also played banjo. Except that Ma seemed to indicate that Meyer is musical director, the impression from the audience is that these are four musicians equally expert in their own domains and equally excited to be making music with peers, just for the fun of it.

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2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

2013 Tanglewood on Parade

August, 2013 performance; by Dave Read

We arrived at Tanglewood on Parade in time for the 8pm round of brass fanfares, which preceded the gala concert in the Shed. At 2pm, brass fanfares at the Main Gate heralded the beginning of an all-day celebration featuring performances throughout the Tanglewood campus by Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, Boston University Tanglewood Institute students, and members of the BSO.

3 orchestras and 4 conductors

The gala concert included the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and four conductors. Charles Dutoit led the TMCO in Borodin’s Polovetsian Dances from Prince Igor, followed by the BSO, under the baton of Stephane Deneve, playing Gershwin’s An American in Paris. After intermission, Laureate Conductor John Williams led the Pops in his own The Cowboys Overture, then current Pops conductor Keith Lockhart led them in Bernstein’s Love Theme and Finale from On the Waterfront, and then conducted a concertino on Bond Themes with the Boston Cello Quartet.

1812 Overture w/o cannon

As always, Tanglewood on Parade was brought to a close with a fiery reading of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Missing this year, alas, were the field artillery on the lawn, which always added an extra dimension to the excitement when an earth-rattling fussilade was cued by the conductor onstage. Traditionally, Eastover Resort, whose founder was a collector of Civil War memorabilia, would loan a battery of about 8 artillery pieces to Tanglewood for the day. But after a recent change in ownership and sale of the cannon, maybe it’s time to check on the whereabouts of the Civil War cannon presented to Seiji Ozawa on the occasion of his last Tanglewood on Parade in 2001 as BSO music director?

Mother Courage and her Children at Shakespeare & Co.

Aug. 2, 2013 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children now playing at Tina Packer’s Shakespeare and Co. theatre under the insightful direction of Tony Simotes, is one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. The play is set in central Europe in the 17th century during the Thirty Years’ War, which was fought largely between Catholics and Protestants.

The play demands a large cast and style of production that is deliberately alienating as it weaves together its story in a series of scenes, songs, and projected text summaries and it is never stagy. These are real people. The plot concerns Mother Courage’s unsuccessful attempt to feed and care for her children, two sons and a daughter, during the dozen years that the play covers. She has set herself up with a wagon pulled onto the stage and from it she makes her living selling food and goods to soldiers.

The wagon becomes a symbol always onstage reflecting her restless life and questionable prosperity. By the play’s end, it is a dilapidated cart and she is like an animal pulling it. Olympia Dukakis is marvelous in this, her 5th time grappling with the convoluted character. Although she is on stage most of the time, she never draws attention to herself if stress belongs to another character.

The play opens as she and the children drag onstage the cart in which she and they live. Her co-stars, Apolo Dukakis as the Chaplain and John Douglas Thompson as the Cook, each bring their own relationship and attraction to Mother Courage’s conniving. Each role is played competently.

All members of the cast are well drawn, and the audience cannot help being drawn by the most vulnerable. Of the 3 children, Kittrin, who hears but cannot speak, played by Brook Parks, moves through this role convincingly, giving her life (and the red shoes she finally gets), to save all the children in the village from attack.

Despite calamities, this play is not depressing. The characters and situations that Brecht has woven into his play have produced a gem. It is a joy to have been able to see it on a local stage. Director Tony Simotes and Olympia Dukakis have pooled their talents to create an evening in the theatre this reviewer hopes to have the time to see again before it closes in September.