Dec. 6, 2014 Article by Dave Read

Reading the New Yorker is always an entertaining and edifying activity, and sometimes more, such as when I got a rush of sympatico from an article by Alex Ross in the Dec. 1, 2014 issue, Brushfires; Andris Nelsons energizes the Boston Symphony. The caption of the accompanying illustration reads, “On the podium, Nelsons, a galvanic young Latvian, lunges about uninhibitedly.” It remined me of my effort to describe Maestro Nelsons during his first Tanglewood concert since being named BSO Music director, the July 11, 2014 program featuring Anne-Sophie Mutter performing Dvorak’s Violin Concerto.
“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.”

lexicon of the music critic

Being totally unschooled in the lexicon of the music critic, I’m pretty much left to write about the appearance of a concert, leaving the cognoscenti to describe how the music sounds in relation to how they think it should sound. Orchestras such as the Boston Symphony project a uniform, practically static image, which makes it easy for the conductor to be the focus of my attention, as he (and sometimes she) articulates his musical directives by way of gestures. And this gesticulation can range from eloquent to akward, from geriatric to gymnastic, from martial to manic.

In his New Yorker article, Ross says that “… Nelsons lunges about uninhibitedly, violating textbook rules about the wisdom of minimizing one’s gestures. I imagine that Boston players have already mastered imitations of his signature moves: the Backward Lean, the Extreme Crouch, the Trapeze Grab, the Across-the-Table Ice-Cream Scoop.”

So it is good to know that a respected music critic deems a conductor’s gesticulations worthy of more than a passing mention, and that the lexicon needn’t be staid. It feels like getting permission to be playful even while writing about highbrow stuff! Thanks to Alex Ross, I’ll take a stab at adding to the lexicon when Nelsons returns to Tanglewood next July.

[bctt tweet=”Watching Andris Nelsons conduct.”]

Article by Dave Read

The August 24 performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 was the final item on the 2014 schedule of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s season at Tanglewood, as it almost always is. It is such an immense work of art that to call it a fitting way to close the season is silly. Each eight week season of music by the BSO and their guests here in the Berkshires generates its own themes and patterns, hits and misses. Beethoven’s Ninth fits regardless where it gets scheduled.

Esteemed Maestro Charles Dutoit conducted today, eliciting a performance that was both ethereal and thrilling. And as they’ve done before, the amateurs of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus attained the same heights of perfection as their professional colleagues of the BSO.

We didn’t time the performance, but would guess that it was longish; it certainly wasn’t hurried, and we did slip into reverie in the first movement, which seems to invite the mind to detach, after establishing the basic theme, which ignites a long slow fuse of anticipation for its fulfillment an hour hence.

There was a vast audience today, occupying areas of Lawn that had been vacant since James Taylor’s concerts on July 3 & 4.

Article by Dave Read

Billed as Oz with Orchestra, the Tanglewood presentation of a newly restored print of The Wizard of Oz, vocals and dialogue intact and paired with the Boston Pops’ performance of the original orchestration, made for a thoroughly entertaining experience. Way more than a mere nostalgia kick, it commanded your attention, leaving no room for daydreaming. Reflections on childhood viewings had to be postponed until afterwards, when an especially animated and chatty crowd strolled back to the parking lots around 11 PM.

Like many in the audience tonight, my experience with The Wizard of Oz dates back to the days of black and white television and the annual broadcasts from 1956 onward. I dug this movie from the get-go, even as an under-age iconoclast disapproving anything my sisters liked. And tonight I responded with the unbridled joy of an over-aged optimist!

Conductor Keith Lockart’s established versatility was on full display as he used a pair of digital devices to lead the Boston Pops in their supporting role. It was a seamless collaboration between the orchestra and the movie projected on a large screen overhead. They didn’t intrude, but their playing was a welcome embellishment throughout.

Two especially noteworthy elements were the color and the choreography. It was a riot of color, which I’d describe as psychedelic if it weren’t for how sharply defined every fanciful object and background was. And the choreography was a revelation. What I would’ve called clowning around when I saw it as a kid tonight looked like deceptively artful dancing. The scene where Dorothy encounters the Scarecrow may as well be called a pas de deux. Ray Bolger had a genius that made stumbling look poetic.

True enough There’s no place like home – but neither is there anyplace quite like Tanglewood, where fondly recalled experiences from childhood can be reprinted in memory in the most delightful Technicolor fashion.

Article by Dave Read

The Beach Boys, in the persons of Mike Love, Bruce Johnston and replacements for Brian, Carl, Dennis Wilson, and Al Jardine, did an estimable job of re-creating the mid-60s pop music milieu during their concert at Tanglewood for an audience primarily in their mid-60s.

Love was energetic and engaging frontman; there was a big segment of the show when scores of people were allowed to cram the aisle along the stage and he traded high-fives with dozens of them. Then, as the band launched into Barbara Ann, the 1965 cover that was one of the band’s biggest hits, he helped a couple of young girls scramble onto the stage and eventually there were several youngsters rocking out, including one who got paired up with the lead guitarist. (Barbara Ann at 1:25 of the video)

Beach Boys play Good Vibrations and Sloop John B

The two hour show began with the band racing through an 8-song set of beach-specific songs and included dozens of the band’s most popular hits from “back in the day.” Also included were a couple of nicely done covers – California Dreamin’ and Why Do Fools Fall in Love and something new, Pices Brothers, which Love wrote in tribute to George Harrison. Personal favorites Good Vibrations and Sloop John B evoked welcome flashes back to the days of dusty stacks of wax!

Article by Dave Read

Tanglewood was the place to be tonight for anyone interested in the breadth and depth of music – in sampling the continuum of sound available in the performance of symphonic compositions. On paper, this was a simple program, two composers, one opus and one soloist each, one orchestra, one chorus, one conductor. The resulting concert was simply splendid, leaving one at a loss to imagine a dimension of musical sound left unheard.

It began with guest conductor Stephane Deneve leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra and pianist Emanuel Ax in Beethoven’s Piano conerto No. 5 in E-flat, Emperor. It was composed in the midst of war, with Napoleon’s army bombarding Vienna, causing Beethoven to seek refuge in the cellar and cover his head with pillows to protect what little remained of his hearing. Yet this piece is the antithesis of bellicosity; what Mr. Ax and the BSO were about was certainly not war. They conspired to produce an aural space where the audience could bask in its complex brightness.

Alexnder Nevsky, from film score to concert piece

Next came Alexnder Nevsky, Cantata for mixed chorus and orchestra, with mezzo-soprano. It was composed by Sergei Prokofiev in collaboration with film director Sergei Eisenstein, to depict the exploits of Alexander Nevsky, the young prince who rallies a ragtag army of Russian peasants in the 13th century to vanquish invading Teutonic Knights. Nevesky, proclaimed Saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 16th century, was recently declared the main hero of Russia’s history in a popular poll.

Despite its origins as propoganda in support of Joseph Stalin’s regime, Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, which he adapted from the film score, has attained a purely musical life of its own. In fact, attending this performace meant respite from the worrisome world, because it practically commandeers sensibility, one bit of musical splendor following upon another. It may depict awful historical events, but it uses beautiful sounds to do so.

August 5, 2014 Article by Dave Read

The 2014 Tanglewood on Parade Gala Concert featured Gov. Duval Patrick reciting This Difficult Song: The Star-Spangled Banner at 200, and Maestros Stephane Deneve, Keith Lockhart, Andris Poga, Leonard Slatkin, and John Williams conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and students from the Boston University Tanglewood Institute performing a program of music by Aaron Copland, Shostokovitch, George Gershwin, John Williams, Dave Brubeck, and Tchaikovsky, whose 1812 Overture was the grand finale.

Following an afternoon of student ricitals in Ozawa Hall and elsewhere on the vast Tanglewood campus and the gradual accretion of music patrons and fancy picnic fanatics assembling on the Lawn, a delightful Berkshires summer afternoon quickly morphed into a dark and story night! Lawn patrons were evacuated from their water-logged encampments, invited to shelter in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, where they crammed the rear colonnade and side aisles. Perhaps to allow time for blanket-wringing-out and candelabra-wiping-off, the concert was delayed until 8:55, although the Fanfares by TMC Fellows were performed on time at 8.

Blue Rondo a la Turk in new symphonic arrangement

One highlight on today’s concert was the Boston Pops performance of Dave Brubeck’s brilliant Blue Rondo a la Turk, in a new arrangement that they commissioned from son Chris Brubeck. Pops conductor Lockhart introduced the number by telling the audience that Brubeck was rather quizzical when first asked about a symphonic arrangement for his father’s singular jazz classic. But then he got to work and the result, judging from tonight’s scintillating performance by Lockhart and the Pops, is a piece bound to only broaden the audience for the original.

Intermission was shortened and a few pieces were deleted from the program, and one added – William’s Theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was received with an extra round of applause. The truncated program caused no diminution at all in its entertainment value, though; rather the audience seemed to have loved the concert and then were happily surprised and thrilled by the fireworks that followed. Proceeds from this concert go to support the Tanglewood Music Center.