2017 Tanglewood reviews

Beethoven’s Ninth closes 2017 Tanglewood season

August 28, 2017 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

The honeymoon between Music Director Andris Nelsons, born 1978, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, born 1881, is over; their marriage was on full display for the 2017 season finale at Tanglewood, where they produced as beautiful performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as you could imagine. With four soloists, and the estimable Tanglewood Festival Chorus, with new conductor James Burton, the Koussevitsky Music Shed, and the enormous audience, combined to become the locus of the music world, for one splendid late summer afternoon in the Berkshires, where autumn alone is sufficient to follow a summer of such splendid sounds.

Beethoven's Ninth closes 2017 Tanglewood season

Andris Nelsons conducts the BSO at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott photo

During the moment between movements, Maestro Nelsons stood still, his hands on the podium, as if connected to a charging station. After all, he is the only one of the 200+ musicians on stage with a role on every note in the hour-long composition. In that vein, the TFC deserve extra plaudits for their impossible stillness the forty plus minutes they are in place, but not singing. This marvelous musical tableau is completed by them.

Under Nelsons’ direction, today’s performance, perhaps the fifteenth time we’ve heard the BSO play Beethoven’s Ninth at Tanglewood, filled out the character we’d perceived when contemplating the great composer. It lifted some feeling that Beethoven hadn’t attained the full measure of satisfaction owed a hard working man. Now, I can imagine the joy he felt upon first hearing its performance.

Housatonic at Stockbridge, Charles Ives

The Housatonic at Stockbridge from Three Places in New England by Charles Ives was a sublime five minute meditative sketch made especially poignant because it depicts a locale on the sinuous river a few miles away as the composer felt on his honeymoon there. The conductor looked like an angler patiently working a fly under an overhang, while a light drizzle resolved in a thunderstorm.

Aug. 27, 2017 Sunday, 2:30pm

Koussevitzky Music Shed – Tanglewood, Lenox, MA

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Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Katie Van Kooten, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
Russell Thomas, tenor
John Relyea, bass-baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
James Burton, conductor

IVES “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” from Three Places in New England
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9 (65 min)

Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

Hotels near Tanglewood

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Getting around the Tanglewood campus

The Tanglewood campus, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center comprises several hundred acres in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge. It is the location of the Koussevitsky Music Shed and Ozawa Hall, where hundreds of thousands attend concerts and a variety of events, including picnics. We always advise new visitors to arrive early and take their daily walking exercise wandering the beautiful Tanglewood grounds. This dynamic map of the Tanglewood grounds includes photos and information for such points of interest as Aaron Copland Library, Highwood Manor House, The Glass House, and The Lion’s Gate.

Tanglewood Takes Flight with Mass Audubon at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary

August 2016 Tanglewood program review by Dave Read

Tanglewood Takes Flight; Celebration of Birds and Music with Mass Audubon at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary is a collaboration between two organizations that span the town of Lenox, a novel merging of their missions. The program is a most obvious idea to anyone who has attended concerts at Tanglewood, where birds are likely to sit in with the house band. We attended “Program lll” Saturday at 7 a.m. with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Piano Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center performing these piecs from Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux: Le Chopard des Alpes, Le Loriot, La Buse varible, and Le Merle bleu.

Yellow warblers and red-eyed vireos

Immediately afterwards the audience was assigned to groups for hikes in the sanctuary, led by bird experts. Our guide, Walt Peterson, called out a yellow warbler, to everyone’s amazement and, among many other deeds of ornithological wizadry, he identified the song or the red-eyed vireo, to my delight because it seems to be the song I hear everytime I hike hereabouts.

Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

Hotels near Tanglewood

Getting around the Tanglewood campus

Tanglewood on Parade 2017

August 2, 2016 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

Tanglewood on Parade is one of those events that qualifies as the coolest thing in the world, an event you’d make a point of attending, if you knew enough to. It is an all-day celebration of all things classically musical, in a variety of venues spread amid the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s million-acre campus in the Berkshires. You could catch two full symphonic concerts plus several recitals, while picnicking in the company of true picnic hobbyists, all on the same nickel.

Tchaikovsky’s simple and triumphant 1812 Overture caps the Gala Concert – the lithe Keith Lockhart conducting a massive ensemble combining the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, including live mortar rounds while the Overture climaxes, followed by a twenty minute fireworks display over nearby Stockbridge Bowl.

Even the musically challenged, people who don’t know an allegro from a concertante, can witness it once, then again annually for a decade or more and still retain his utter naivete. The place hath charms that soothe even the rustic’s breast.

Tanglewood on Parade Concert Program

Tuesday, August 1, at 8pm
THE GREGORY E. BULGER FOUNDATION CONCERT
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA
BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
CHARLES DUTOIT, MORITZ GNANN, KEITH LOCKHART,
KEN-DAVID MASUR, BRAMWELL TOVEY, and
JOHN WILLIAMS, conductors
GARRICK OHLSSON, piano
DAWN UPSHAW, soprano

COPLAND Fanfare for the Common Man
FELLOWS OF THE TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER,
KEN-DAVID MASUR conducting

COPLAND Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
Andante sostenuto—
Molto moderato—Allegro assai
GARRICK OHLSSON, piano
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA,
BRAMWELL TOVEY conducting

KODÁLY Suite from Háry János
Prelude. The Fairy Tale Begins Viennese Musical Clock Song
The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon
Intermezzo
Entrance of the Emperor and his Court
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA,
CHARLES DUTOIT conducting

INTERMISSION

MENDELSSOHN Overture, The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave), Opus 26
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA,
MORITZ GNANN conducting

GERSHWIN / KERN (arr. Nelson Riddle)
“Love is Here to Stay”
“I Won’t Dance”
DAWN UPSHAW, soprano
BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
KEITH LOCKHART conducting

John WILLIAMS Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
A New Beginning from Minority Report
Throne Room & Finale from Star Wars
BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
JOHN WILLIAMS conducting

TCHAIKOVSKY 1812 Overture, Opus 49
TMC ORCHESTRA and
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
KEITH LOCKHART conducting

Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

Hotels near Tanglewood

Getting around the Tanglewood campus

2016 Opening week at Tanglewood

Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

For the first time in seventeen years, our Tanglewood season got underway with James Taylor and his All-Star Band, instead of with Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion. During Keillor’s run, which began in the last days of the Clinton Administration and ended at the same point in Obama’s, one could always count on a refreshing dose of patriotism, particularly during pre- and post-show singalongs.

James Taylor and his All-Star Band play tanglewood, July 4, 2017. — James Taylor and his All-Star Band play tanglewood, July 4, 2017; Hilary Scott photo.

James Taylor delivered our dose this year, when he opened his July 4th show with a plaintive rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, which had the vast lawn audience on its feet, maybe not at attention, but clearly sharing a moment of quiet reflection. It was nice and easy, in typical James Taylor fashion, no polemics, just a respectful reading of the anthem of the nation that remains mankind’s best chance for a fully realized life.

Followed immediately by another in a long line of outstanding rock n’ roll performances by Taylor and his band, nearly annual events here since the millenium. It’s not unusual for him to have a special musical guest in tow, from Taylor Swift to Carole King, and this time Bonnie Raitt took the stage for a couple of numbers, including a searing, soaring rendition of Johnny B.Goode, the anthem of the nation of rock ‘n roll, written by founding father Chuck Berry, who died in March.

Another perspective of Keillor’s Tanglewood run is that it opened during the Music Directorship of Seiji Ozawa, spanned James Levine’s, and concluded during Andris Nelsons’, who returned to the Koussevitsky Music Shed July 7th to open the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection.

Andris Nelsons leads BSO and TFC in performance of Mahler Symphony No. 2, Resurrection

In his third sason as Music Director, Meestro Nelsons stode purposely to the podium Friday night, following the slow, row-by-row assembling of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus on the risers behind the orchestra, cued the austere opening measures of the piece that will develop into an overwhelming, opulent musical experience. He is a compelling figure, marshalling the forces arrayed before him from the podium which he occupies with a deliberateness not seen from dozens of oher conductors we’ve watched here.

This performance was folllowed by several curtain-calls and an ovation that lasted ten minutes or more. Here is a link to the BSO’s video podcast on Mahler 2. To read a “detailed explanation of how Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 is a heart-shattering work of genius,” including video clips and animated gifs, follow this link.

The BSO customarily sees to it that the opening night program is “Gala” worthy; beyond ticking off that box, this year they’ve also adorned the season with a sort of symmetry, since the season-closing Beethoven’s 9th is as thoroughly soul-stirring as the Mahler, both concluding with orchestral and choral paroxysms.