Tanglewood

By Dave Read (August 28, 2022 concert) – The Tanglewood portion of the Boston Symphony Orchestra‘s 141st season concluded with a brilliant performance of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 in D minor, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

Beethoven’s great work has been on the season-closing program at Tanglewood for a quarter century; thus, a returning audience has the opportunity to enjoy it to the fullest, because there is almost always a guest conductor on the podium. (BSO music directors depart for gigs overseas three or four weeks into summer) No less an eminence than Mstislav Rostropovich both conducted and played cello in 1998, when I first attended.

Maestro Thomas arrived at the Tanglewood Music Center as a conducting student in 1968, became the orchestra’s assistant conductor for a year, and then associate conductor until 1973, when Seiji Ozawa began his long reign atop the BSO. In 1987, Thomas established the New World Symphony, regarded as a replication of the Tanglewood Music Center.

Today’s program opened with Psalm 90, by Charles Ives, the choral piece he considered his valedictory work. And so a series of organ chords are the first sounds of a Tanglewood program, an event as rare as hen’s teeth!

And the Tanglewood Festival Chorus gets into the act long before they would have otherwise. Their still, soundless, seated presence above and behind the orchestra during the first forty-five minutes of the Ninth, is a visible sacrifice to art.

When it wills, nature adorns itself most felicitously – every harshness met with a subtlety, roars answered with whispers, searing crescendos come to rest on beds of rhythm. Buffeted, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, by the madness of old world politics, Beethoven found balance with a pilgrimage into music, into the organization of sound, that element of nature that inspires the liberation of the spirit, and rails against its regimentation.

Few items across the world of art are so universally regarded as epitomes as is Beethoven’s Ninth, nor are many artists as beloved as he is. The tiny bit of time spent in rapt attention can be as wise and beneficial a purchase as any other made that season.

Instead of more words about a thing that is to be heard, received, felt – rather than described, here is a look at my program, with simultaneous notes meant to remind me what to write about. But, despite the look of frenzy, never have I felt more calm and peaceful at a concert – or anywhere.

If brain cancer renders this performance Michael Tilson Thomas’ valediction, then may it be revealed that Beethoven himself was in the wings, to spur the musicians on to the performance of their lives.

By Dave Read (August 21, 2022 concert) – The Violin Concerto No. 1, in G minor, Opus 26, composed by Max Bruch in 1866, was given a tearfully beautiful performance by Itzhak Perlman at Tanglewood, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the artful direction of Dima Slobodeniouk.

Thus, we have the work of a German, played by a Jew, with tempo set by a Russian – thus, we understand the epitaph on Bruck’s tombstone:

“Music is the Language of God.”

(Politics, then, must be the Babel of Humanity)

Mr. Perlman, born in 1945 in British Palestine, first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1958, then shared the bill on the same show seven years later with the Rolling Stones! He is the first virtuoso I heard in person, several decades ago, when he played the Violin Concerto in D Minor of Jean Sibelius, with the Springfield Symphony. Such is the thrill of great music when performed by a great musician – it is everlasting.

What a fascination it is to see what you see at such a concert, all the equipment, and furniture, and people in similar costumes (most masked today), and all the implements, the instruments, all the beating, blowing, and bowing the score calls for, cohere into a thing the ear tells the tongue to say is pure and rich as honey.

After a fist-bump with the first violin, Mr. Perlman left the stage to waves of applause from the audience, on their feet in the Shed and across the vast lawn, where another blissful Sunday afternoon was enjoyed.

Then, Maestro Slobodeniouk led his charges through a thrilling reading of the Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68 to conclude the program, which had begun with a brief entertainment named subito con forza (suddenly with force) by the young Korean composer, Unsuk Chin.

Although it may be a case of anticipatory hearing, I’m sure I heard Beethoven several times during the BSO’s performance of Brahms. With Beethoven’s Ninth on the bill here next week, is it any wonder?

By Dave Read (August 7, 2022 concert) – Thomas Ades is in the fifth and final year of his position as Artistic Partner of the BSO, during which time he composed today’s opening selection, on commission from nine organizations from all around the world, including, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Australia.

The piece is called Shanty – Over the Sea, and neither reminded me of any of the numerous sea chanties I’ve enjoyed listening to, nor did it seem to leave its mooring – but merely rolled from side to side, at anchor.

He succeeded in wringing brilliant performances from Leonidas Kavakos, violin, Antoine Tamestit, viola, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in E-flat, for violin, viola, and orchestra.

This piece of Mozart’s music is so uncomplicated to the pedestrian ear, so rich and exciting that one is tempted to relax and stare into space, or even to close your eyes. Today, that would have deprived you half the joy that was to be had watching the interplay among the conductor, soloists, and orchestra. It seemed an un-scripted ballet.

The breeze originating on the far side of the Lawn beckoned us during intermission, in time to stand just off the porch of the visitor’s center and see rain approach, approach, and then soak those citizens of Lawn nation too far from a tree to hug, a porch, or an eave to angle under. And why not, next on the bill is The Planets, Gustav Holst’s suite of tone poems, which was inspired by his reading a book on how horoscopes are cast. No better accompaniment for the relief of a cooling shower in the midst of a stretch of oppressive weather.

By Dave Read (August 2, 2022 concert) – While the Festival of Fancy Picnics, which accompanies Tanglewood on Parade, had to scramble for shelter, the gala evening concert was a sparkling, scintillating success. Tanglewood’s founding maestro, Serge Koussevitsky, staged the first one in 1940, to raise money in support of beleaguered Europe, before we joined the war.

Today, besides serving as a principle fund-raiser for the BSO, Tanglwood on Parade is a showcase for the accomplishments of the Tanglewood Music Center fellows, and the students of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, with and without the established master craftsmen and women of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops.

Although we have been to twenty or so of these tuneful extravaganzas, we paid extra-close attention to the opening piece on today’s program, played by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, because we participated in their opening exercises last month. The natural bias resulting from that bonding experiecne notwithstnding, these kids knocked the Hindemith out of the ballpark – they blew the roof off the joint!

Kudos due also to the programmer, because Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber not only showcases a full gamut of instrumentation, but also has plenty of quiet “white space” which heightens the importance and satisfaction of the myriad small sounds that comprise a symphonic work. Joann Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and resident artist here, led the orchestra, and then handed the baton to John Williams, who led the BSO in his Bernstein tribute, Just down West Street, which he dedicated to retiring TMC boss Ellen Highsteen. Thomas Wilkins, Stefan Asbury, and Thomas Ades rounded out the roster of conductors on the program.

We missed the antique artillery pieces that usually punctuate the annual finale, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and found the performance of the Ukrainian national anthem a jingoistic reflex rather than a meaningful gesture. Sure, we sympathize with those beleaguered people, but no less so than the Palestinians, Uyghurs, and all oppressed peoples.

By Dave Read (July 31, 2022 concert) – Paul Lewis completed his Beethoven weekend with the matinee performance of Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor, having performed 2 & 3 and 1 & 4 on Friday and Saturday nights.

In two respects, at least, Mr. Lewis is an outlier – he was born in England and now is a citizen of Ireland, and, at fifty, he is only ten years removed from his BSO and Tanglewood debuts. English emigres usually settle in America, and virtuosi usually make their classical music debuts before they are old enough to vote!

The artistry displayed by Mr. Lewis seems to include some measure of alchemy, as it makes the piano sound at once as large as the orchestra and a moment later no bigger than a zither.

The bright sunny Berkshires day, with a breeze off Stockbridge Bowl, is the ideal milieu for the wander amid one’s imagination impelled by the music of Ludwig von Beethoven. What a treat to have the great man’s work made manifest by such artists as Mr. Lewis, Maestro Nelsons, and the Boston Symphone Orchestra – how could any but the loftiest of thoughts and feelings result?

They cannot, if we’re left alone with the music; when we read Jan Swafford’s program notes, however, we’re reminded how contemporary all great thinkers are:

“What a destructive, disorderly life I see and hear around me, nothing but drums, cannons, and human misery in every form.” Thus spake Beethoven two centuries ago, and thus speak admirers of his music today.