By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, July 9, 2023 performance – The featured composition on the program, in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, for the first Sunday of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2023 Tanglewood tenure, the Brahms Violin Concerto in D, Opus 77, was performed brilliantly by violin soloist Hilary Hahn, artist-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Wigmore Hall in London!
This concerto by Brahms is a thrilling symphonic work with enough twists, turns, and tempo modifications to keep the mind fully engaged for the duration. (Perhaps the caesura at the end of the adagio may fool you into rustling for your car keys!)
As the concluding movement gets underway, however, there’s no room for doubt, except for how such a radiantly gowned woman could be responsible for such “fire, flash, and energy” as Steven Ledbetter describes the concerto’s finale in the program – and which ever-so-aptly describes today’s performance by Ms. Hahn.