By Dave Read, July 25, 2025 performance – There was a broad breadth of music on offer at Tanglewood tonight, extending from the seventeenth/eightteenth century Johann Sebastian Bach, through nineteenth century Felix Mendelssohn, to the nineteenth/twentieth century Gustav Mahler. It was a beautiful survey, under the leadership of music director Andris Nelsons, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with violin soloist Maria Duenas.
Brief as it was, one almost feels relief listening to an air by Bach, as if, since still we know how to please ourselves, soon enough we’ll remember how to govern ourselves. For many Shed veterans, listening to Bach reminds of a time when politicians spoke in complete sentences, respected the rule of law, and the separation of powers. The sprightliness of the Bach was followed by the substance of the Mahler. There’s an economy to Bach, with a small range of sounds in repetition; in Mahler, there’s a broad survey of sounds, many of which are full of nuance.
The performance of Mendelssohn’s concerto by Ms. Duenas, besides being of the utmost artistic merit, was also an impressive physical accomplishment, since it required her to play, practically non-stop, for half an hour! Her playing, which seemed somewhat quiet at the opening, was dazzling and the piece was an exciting duet between orchestra and violin. It was delightful to read in the program notes that Mendelssohn sought to knit the concerto’s movements together seamlessly enough to preclude unwanted inter-movement applause. It mentions a protracted oboe note meant to bridge the first two movements.
Premature applause by the Tanglewood audience has always been a source of amusement – it seems to lessen as the season progresses, which re-enforces my faith in my fellow music consumer; it’s usually less evident the more obscure and soloist-free the program. Since composers were bothered enough by unwanted mid-performance applause to seek its mitigation in the composition, perhaps the BSO would append an applause admonition to their pre-concert spiel about “the unlikely event of inclement weather…?”