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!

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.

Article by Dave Read

When I organized my Tanglewood calendar, the chief reason I selected this program was because it featured the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (TFC), which I have come to know and enjoy by way of their annual appearance on the season finale program of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. And so the TFC is associated with the solemn feelings engendered by that work, all that heavy stuff about eternal brotherhood.

But instead of getting a profundity fix today, a giant glowing happy face got slapped on my soul! You would think something called Va, pensiero (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) would be doleful, melancholy, yet it had the opposite effect on me. Preceded by the Overture to Nabucco, which includes melodies from it, Va, pensiero was as thoroughly satisfying as any musical performance I’ve attended. Whatever Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was intending to convey, joy was what I felt.

This performance had such an immediate and sustained effect on me that I began to suspect that I had heard it over and over a lifetime ago, as if Joy had been inculcated while these melodies looped – had been embedded in me like treachery had been in the Manchurian candidate!

Triumphal Scene (Act II, scene 2) from Aida

Of course what followed was more of the same, the Triumphal Scene (Act II, scene 2) from Aida which Verdi composed some thirty years later. If I hadn’t just heard Va, pensiero, I may well have had a similarly ecstatic response to these selections from Aida. As it happened, a wonderful afternoon just got even better. Representing less than one-fifth of Aida, the Triumphal Scene nevertheless delivers a full measure of enjoyment, and even in today’s concert setting, was visually appealing, trios of trumpeters flanking the orchestra.

Conductor Jacques Lacombe and pianist Gabriela Montero

Opening the program, which was conducted by Canadian Jacques Lacombe in his BSO and Tanglewood debuts, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with soloist Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero. Marked by familiar melodies, we listened to it while the strolling the lawn, the better to enjoy the singular Tanglewood experience.

Article by Dave Read

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.

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!