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Dave Read

Lizzie Borden opera at Ozawa Hall Tanglewood

Lizzie Borden opera at Ozawa Hall Tanglewood

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Lizzie Borden, A Chamber Version in Seven Scenes was performed in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, in a presentation by the Boston Lyric Opera Orchestra that brought the house down. Maybe this opera gives the lie to the maxim that the US, in comparison to European countries, is a cultural wasteland. How could that be when the whole audience could sing along with the choral epilogue?

Lizzie Borden Opera performed Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood July 31, 2014Wherever Sophocles and Euripedes found source material for their Electras, Richard Plant could access not only Fall River, MA police logs and newspaper morgue, but he could hear his tragic heroine’s exploits recounted by rope-skipping children in schoolyards all across America!

Lizzie Borden from schoolyard to opera stage

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Plant, author of the scenario, began work on the opera with composer Jack Beeson in 1954, convincing the composer that this retelling of the Electra myth would revolve around why Lizzie Borden did it, rather than if she did it. Plant eventually had to call on Kenward Elmsie to finish the libretto, and Beeson finally cpompleted the music in 1965.

Lizzie Borden Opera performed Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood July 31, 2014They get to the axe business straight away, with Lizzie planting it – with a loud “thwack,” into the surface of the kitchen table, so that it is pretty much front and center throughout the 90 minute production. No blood, no gore. After Abby and Andrew Border have been murdered, they merely lay still on their backs upstage. And by then, the audience’s sympathy has settled on Lizzie, insofar as we see madness envelope her – as her dead mother’s wedding dress enwraps her.

Even though sung in English, we found it helpful to scan the texts projected on either side of the stage. Something about the operatic singing inhibits discernment of literal sense, but this libretto is laconic enough that reading along didn’t diminish the the beauty of this performance.

Music by Jack Beeson; libretto by Kenward Elmslie
Based on a scenario by Richard Plant
Realized by Todd Bashore (orchestration) and John Conklin (dramaturgy)

Verdi delights at Tanglewood July 27, 2014

Verdi delights at Tanglewood July 27, 2014

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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.

BSO and Tanglewood Festival Chorus performing Verdi at Tanglewood, July 27, 2014.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.

2014 Tanglewood Music Center Fellows video

2014 Tanglewood Music Center Fellows video series

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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.

Andris Nelsons Tanglewood program with Joshua Bell Beethoven’s Fifth

Andris Nelsons Tanglewood program with Joshua Bell Beethoven’s Fifth

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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.

Tanglewood July 20,2014 Andris Nelsons led the BSO along with violin soloist Joshua BellThe 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.

Andris Nelsons led the BSO along with violin soloist Joshua Bell (Hilary Scott)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!

Andris Nelsons era at Tanglewood begins

July 13, 2014, 2014 Article by – Andris Nelsons acknowledges the crowd before his all-Dvorak program, 7.11.14 (Hilary Scott)The era of Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood got underway with an All-Dvorák program featuring violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, Nelsons’ first concert here since being named the fifteenth Music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, starting with the upcoming fall season at Symphony Hall.

As if it were merely another day at work, Maestro Nelsons jogged up to the podium and summoned the orchestra to action right away. Opening with The Noonday Witch, a Symphonic poem being performed by the BSO for the first time, allowed focus to be on this new union between the 35 year old Nelsons and the 133 year old BSO, rather than on listening to a familiar score being played again. It wasn’t long before they seemed familiar, as if conductor and orchestra were all of a piece.

Anne-Sophie Mutter and Andris Nelsons perform Dvorak's Violin Concerto with the BSO (Hilary Scott)And ready to accompany Anne-Sophie Mutter on Dvoráks’ Violin Concerto. Described as being “fiendishly diffcult,” as performed tonight, it was a flawless delight, evoking an eruption of applause from the audience. But the happiest people in the Shed were Ms. Muter and Maestro Nelsons, who beamed the brightest of smiles to each other before embracing and taking their bows.

Andris Nelsons and Anne-Sophie Mutter at Tanglewod

They both were on the program two years ago that celebrated Tanglewood’s 75th anniversary. Ms. Muter, who made her international debut in 1976, has recorded Dvorák’s Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, for release in October.

Mr. Nelsons’ conducting looked fluid and mobile. 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. Here’s hoping he enjoys a long and happy occupation of this place!

James Taylor at Tanglewood July 4, 2014

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As if the ghost of Paul Revere had gotten loose, with a mind to make mischief in the Berkshires, in the days and hours leading up to James Taylor’s 4th of July concert at Tanglewood, a quiet rumor rose to a dull roar that a British(er) were coming – to wit, Sir Paul McCartney would make a special guest appearance.

That would be a reunion of the former Beatle and the first artist signed to the beatles’ Apple records. The anicipation built and built during the concert, as Taylor made 3 or 4 references to his lucky days in London, where he auditioned for McCartney and George Harrison while the Beatles were at work on the White Album. In fact, he began the show with the very audition song Something in the Way She Moves! But it never happened, and I don’t think anybody was disappointed. (McCartney did made an appearance, via video, at Taylor’s 60th birthday celebration here six years ago.)

It was another sold-out Tanglewood gig for Taylor, who appeared fit as a fiddle after taking last year off from touring to concentrate on the latter part of the singer-songwriter job description. He performed one new song tonight that’ll appear on an album eventually – Today, Today, Today. The balance of his typically generous setlist was familiar, including: Handy Man, Fire and Rain, Up on the Roof, Sweet Baby James, You’ve Got a Friend, Buddy Holly’s Everyday. Over the course of the nearly three hour show (including encores), everybody in the band and vocal quartet got the spotlight. Michael Landau, Luis Conte, Walt Fowler, Andrea Zonn, Kate Markowitz, Arnold McCuller, David Lasley, Larry Goldings, Steve Gadd, Lou Marini, Jimmy Johnson. His wife Kim and son Henry joined the vocalists for a couple numbers, too.