Tanglewood

Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit, performs works by Martin, Prokofiev, Saint-Saens

Saturday, 9 February 2008 performance reviewed by Karl Henning

Martin, Petite symphonie concertante for harp, harpsichord, piano and two string orchestras
Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, Opus 19
Saint-Saëns, Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Opus 78, Organ Symphony

Ann Hobson Pilot, harp
Mark Kroll, harpsichord
Randall Hodgkinson, piano
Viviane Hagner, violin
James David Christie, organ
The Boston Symphony Orchestra
Charles Dutoit, guest conductor

The programming for the BSO’s 2007-08 season is notable for a variety of reasons; I confess that I am particularly enjoying the fact that this season features a number of works which, for Boston at any rate, have been rarities. The Petite symphonie concertante by Swiss composer Frank Martin is one such, a piece which has been played at Symphony on only three occasions before now, or rather, twice at Symphony and once at Tanglewood. Not surprisingly, Lausanne native Charles Dutoit has been responsible for half these performances of his compatriot’s work.

Frank Martin’s Petite symphonie concertante was commissioned by Paul Sacher (who was also the agent responsible for bringing into being Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for strings, Arthur Honegger’s Symphony No. 4, Deliciae Basilienses, and Lutosawski’s Double Concerto for oboe and harp). Its title suggests a neoclassical bent, and the Allegro sections have a vigor similar to the early Kammermusiken of Hindemith. The soloists are not given flamboyant roles, but the precise interplay of the three is delightfully set off against the string ensembles.

Viviane Hagner found in the Prokofiev First Concerto some sleeves-rolled-up labor, and some rough edges, which are at curious variance with the predominant lyrical quality which Steven Ledbetter in his program notes (for instance) finds in the Concerto. She played well, and musically; nor does one wish to suggest that a piece must be performed in the same way at all times and in all places; indeed, a young performer must be applauded for taking a considered alternate approach to an oft-played work.

With the Symphony Hall organ freshly restored in the summer of 2005, the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony was part of the gala opening concert for the ’05-’06 season. That performance was outstanding; yet this month’s reprise of the piece was even more exciting. And it is a delight to find that the BSO have reclaimed this work for themselves.

Boston Symphony Orchestra performs The Dream of Gerontius, conducted by Sir Colin Davis

Saturday, 26 January 2008 performance reviewed by Karl Henning

Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius, Opus 38

Ben Heppner, tenor (Gerontius)
Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano (The Angel)
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone (The Priest and The Angel of the Agony)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus (Jn Oliver, conductor)
The Boston Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis, guest conductor

“The greatest work of sacred music that we have between the Verdi Requiem and Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms,” is Michael Steinberg’s encapsulation of Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. Such a remark necessarily shows itself as hyperbole; and immediately suggests the self-imposed boundaries of the concert halls in the West – there is in that assessment little love for, say, Rakhmaninov’s All-Night Vigil (Vespers), for starters – but if taken simply as a commendation of the grandeur and quality of Elgar’s achievement, Steinberg’s encomium displays an affection which is not at all misplaced.

Other than in its land of origin, Gerontius is much less widely known than either the Verdi or the Stravinsky. Yet it is a score into which Elgar poured “my own heart’s blood.” The poem by John Henry Cardinal Newman was of a special and personal importance to Elgar (the composer and his wife Alice often read it together). To this listener’s ears, Gerontius is perhaps Elgar’s most successful large-scale score, unfolding in waves of unfailing grace, and many passages of disarming delicacy. At the end of the manuscript, Elgar wrote an inscription from John Ruskin’s “Sesame and Lilies”: This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.

Ben Heppner was in fine voice, and his performance was sweetly modulated to the character of Gerontius throughout. It was necessarily a less dramatic delivery than Ben is oft famed for; but then, Gerontius is neither Wagner’s Tristan nor Berlioz’s Dido. Sarah Connolly sang nicely, yet her voice was perhaps a shade ‘dusky’ for the role of the Angel. From purely sonic considerations, though, Connolly and Heppner made a most agreeable pairing. Gerald Finley did a splendid job, albeit in two very minor roles; his Litany in Part II, as The Angel of the Agony, was steadfast and thrilling. Although serving as ‘the background’, the truly stand-out performers on Saturday were the orchestra, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. The Chorus sang with such energy, with such focus and yet such ease, that the oratorio seemed a firm cornerstone of their annual repertory – there was no hint that this was only the second set of performances ever undertaken in Boston, and that a quarter century has passed since the first.

There is a famous scolding in the history of performances of Gerontius. In preparing a performance, Sir John Barbirolli needed to chide the tenors and basses for playing it a bit too nice in the Demons’ Chorus: “You’re not bank clerks on a Sunday outing, you’re souls sizzling in hell.” Yet part of it, I think, is the way Elgar wrote the piece; they do seem ‘tidier’ demons than those whom Berlioz has hectoring Faust in his descent to Hades. This is not at all to wish that Elgar had composed the oratorio at all otherwise than he did, of course; and if Elgar’s demons express themselves partly in expert counterpart, perhaps it is something of a pun upon Gradus ad Parnassum, the classic Fux primer.

In conclusion, let us consider a rhetorical question. It is Sir Colin Davis who conducted this magnificent piece here in Boston both in December of 1982, and today. If it is not Sir Colin Davis who comes back to bring it to us again a third time, who will it be?

2006 Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

The annual pre-Fourth of July performance of “A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor” at Tanglewood allows the audience an afternoon of unabashed fellowship, giving us a glimpse at our heritage that is strong enough to quiet the clamorous ire aroused by today’s power-mongers and a feeling that it’ll be all right (if only we keep Powdermilk biscuits in our diet).

Inhabiting a media-soaked world, we’re seldom free of the streaming messages of Washington, DC and Wall Street, and so we need to tune into the News from Lake Woebegon and find the truth about who we are. And those of us fortunate to attend the performance get the extra reward of participating in the pre- and post-show songfest, that has us, unwittingly or not, professing faith while expressing kinship and national devotion.

It’s some bit of alchemy for Garrison Keillor, as politically engaged and insightful an entertainer as Mark Twain was, to somehow channel Pollyanna and send his audience on its way full of hope when their first inclination upon resuming their plugged-in lives would be less spiritual.

This year’s show, the seventh consecutive performed in Tanglewood’s Koussevitsky Music Shed, was as good as it gets even though it was almost devoid of local color. All the previous shows included at least one musical component showcasing Tanglewood musicians as well as skits with Berkshire themes. The “Guy Noir” episode this year, though set at Tanglewood, was really about the current national talent show craze.

Instead, it got its theme from the new Robert Altman movie about the Prairie Home Companion, featuring (as does the movie) a Berkshire neighbor, Meryl Streep, Gospel singer Jearlyn Steele, the Hopeful Gospel Quartet with Robin & Linda Williams, and the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band.

Ms. Streep was a casually beautiful and charming presence throughout the show: in conversation with Mr. Keillor, in the skits, in singing “What’ll I Do?,” in skillfully reading a selection of poems, and poignantly (arm in arm – cheek to tear-dripping cheek) with Ms. Steele for the post-show singalong.

And re-joining the Royal Academy of Radio Acting was actress Erica Rhodes to play the part of Ms. Streep’s prodigal daughter in an hilarious episode of True Stories from Scripture. This was the second star turn here for Ms. Rhodes, who in 2001 played the role of a teen-aged Emily Dickinson hiking Monument Mountain with Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The musical selections were splendid, including a surprisingly sublime rendition of the Reggae anthem “One Love” done by the Hopeful Gospel Quartet and Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band and Jearlyn Steele’s soulful treatment of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” accompanied by Hopeful Gospel Quartet, and Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band.

Special guests were the luminous Wailing Jennys from Canada, Ruth Moody, Nicky Mehta, and Annabelle Chvostek, whose a capella version of “Bring Me A Little Water, Sylvie” brought to light the genius of Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a.Leadbelly. On other numbers, “One Voice,” and “Calling All Angels,” their instrumental skills were on display as well.

(Originally published on NewBerkshire.com)

2005 A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

July 3, 2005 Article by Dave Read

The sixth annual visit of A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor to the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood on July 2, 2005 may be remembered by the 11,000+ in attendance as the “Palms of Victory” show because of the little “non-sectarian” hymn they were taught by Mr. Keillor, who told them they could use it as a call-sign if they should ever encounter him in the airport, but it also will be remembered particularly for Gillian Welch & David Rawlings and Inga Swearingen, who gave strikingly evocative performances that left the audience eager for more.

The humor was as good as it gets, too; the Royal Academy of Radio Acting nailed the Guy Noir episode about the Sprocket tycoon’s $200 million gift to Tanglewood being hijacked for the establishment of the Tanglewood Center for Songwriters, Inc; a wickedly funny Cafe Boeuf with Peter Schickele, and then Schickele’s P.D.Q. Bach duet with David Dusing on the loopy “If Love is Real.”

With the virtual town of Lake Wobegon and it’s fabulous citizenry at its heart, Mr. Keillor’s show is all about community and when the show is on the road, an effort is made to embrace the actual locale, and not only with the funny business. To make that point most emphatically, this show, recognizing that “this is Mohican land,” included a song composed by a Wisconsin-Stockbridge Mohican, Brent Michael Davids.

Inga Swearingen, Prudence Johnsonm, Guys All Star Shoe Band, Edith Wharton String Quartet perform Mohican song

It was sung by Ms. Swearingen and Prudence Johnson, accompanied by the crackerjack Guys All Star Shoe Band, and the Edith Wharton String Quartet, culled from the Tanglewood Music Center just for this show. The latter group acquitted themselves splendidly and no doubt will have fond tales to tell of this day decades down the road when they are wiley veterans of orchestras in places such as Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston.

This was no Tanglewood debut for Mr. Davids; his “Mohican Soup” was sung by Chanticleer to open Tanglewood’s 1999 Festival of Contemporary Music in Seiji Ozawa Hall. In his remarks to the audience that day, he attributed the creative energy in the Berkshires to a foundation established by the Mohicans during their 6,000 year stewardship of the region.

We contacted Mr. Davids at his studio in St. Paul to learn more about him and his song. Several weeks ago he met Mr. Keillor at a local literary gathering and once their conversation got around to their mutual Tanglewood connections, Keillor said “We’re doing a show there next month, will you write something for it?”

So he wrote Stockbridge Mohican Song and sent Keillor the music, lyrics, and demo mp3 file and, as of yesterday (July 5), hasn’t heard from him again. He did listen to the broadcast and liked what he heard, though. In response to our surprise that the whole operation was accomplished so quickly, Mr. Davids said simply, “That’s what I do, I’m a composer.”

Stockbridge Mohican Song

We are coming together (k’MUH yuh WE h’now)
We say Thanks (o NEE oh we KSEE now)

We see the old ones (NAH wuh hah kah CHIGH sock)
We say Thanks (o NEE oh we KSEE now)

Today is a beautiful day (o NAHH kuh MAOW NO no)
We say Thanks (o NEE oh we KSEE now)

Mohican Land (muh HEE kun NEEw AHH kee)
We say Thanks (o NEE oh we KSEE now)

Tan Dun’s The Map, with Yo Yo Ma at Tanglewood

August 7, 2004 performance by Dave Read

Among the many memorable images from this Tanglewood program was this tableau: a Paris-born Chinese cellist and a Siberian violinist trading jazzy licks with the video-taped image of a Chinese leaf blower. Coming during the second movement of Tan Dun’s nine-part composition The Map, Concerto for Cello, Video, and Orchestra, the cellist was Yo Yo Ma, the violinist was B.S.O. Associate Concertmaster Tamara Smirnova, and it drew a round of amused applause from the audience of 9,021.

Somehow this was a night of roots music, perhaps the last thing you’d expect on a Saturday evening in the midst of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s annual sojourn in the Berkshires. And it demonstrated that music is blissfully ignorant of geography, having a way of melding ethnic sounds to speak a language known by each of us, regardless us where, or to whom, we were born.

stone drum, I Ching, shamanism

Maybe the oddest thing is that, in the most literal sense, this evening of brilliant playing by the Boston Symphony was rooted in rock music! That’s right folks, it all came about because of an encounter Maestro Dun had during a visit to his native Hunan province in 1981, while a student at Bejing’s Central Conservatory, with an old man who practiced ba gua stone drumming.

Tan recalled of the old man, who combined principles of the I Ching with shamanistic vocalizations, “The man talked to the wind. He talked both to this life and the past one. I had nothing to offer him, or even to make a record of him, but I promised that one day I would return.”

By the time of his return in 1999, no longer a student but a graduate of Columbia University (Doctor of Musical Arts), with a commission for Yo Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the ba gua drummer, and his tradition, had died. In order to reconstruct his “personal memory of someone who could do something that no one else could do,” Dun made two trips to capture the musical life of the Tuija, Miao, and Dong people, 3 of China’s 55 ethnic minority groups.

Tan describes The Map as being “about minority cultures in China, looking at the past as well as the future” – and as a reconstruction of his own “personal memory of someone who could do something that no one else could.” His aim was to invent an entirely new form, keeping the source material in its pure state on the video screen while simultaneously exploring its timbres in orchestral terms. (Source: program notes by Ken Smith.)

The evening opened with Yo Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble presenting Music from The Silk Road Project.

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2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

A 2004 Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood, with Garrison Keillor

A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor, a delight to radio audiences since the first live broadcast July 6, 1974, has been a favorite on the Berkshire summer calendar since being added to the pre-opening week schedule at Tanglewood in 2000. The fifth local show, July 3, 2004, was an especially memorable one because it included an encore.

The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, for this show joined by Sam Bush (mandolin, fiddle) and Howard Levy (harmonica), was doing such a great job entertaining the departing audience of 10,570 that many simply stayed put. The prolonged ovation that followed their impromptu jam session brought Garrison Keillor back onstage, where he remarked on the rarity of encores in the world of radio and also mentioned that he would be having dinner in a few days with people who were with him on that first broadcast 30 years ago.

Then he took hold of the mic and led the audience in singing a beautiful Bahamian folk song, “I Bid You Goodnight,” which, rather than closing the session, only gave rise to another sing-along, “Amazing Grace.” The loquacious and oh-so-seasoned pro Keillor was so moved by his audience that he stood mute for the final chorus before offering an inaudible “thank you” and finally walking slowly off stage.

Highlights of the show included:

Inga Swearingen – It was the Californian’s 3rd appearance on APHC since May, and she simply stole the show with her beautiful, charming presence, radiant smile, and improbably varied vocal gifts that allow her to juxtapose husky textures with silky lightness;
humorist Calvin Trillin, whose “deadline poems,” rhythmic polemics on the Bush administration, were so apt they inspired us to take a subscription to The Nation, where they are published (and archived);
and, of course, the “News From Lake Wobegon,” wherein Keillor set off in praise of fresh strawberries and rhubarb and wandered into a meditation on the vagaries of true love and the stories that our mothers may or may not have to tell us!

Keillor also showed himself to be as fierce a patriot as he is a partisan and closed a riff on the primacy of individuals over groups with the image of Ray Charles and Ronald Reagan rafting the Mississippi in place of Jim and Huck Finn. Continuing the practice of including a Tanglewood-afilliated guest, we were introduced to the Existential Bass Quartet, comprising 30 year TMC faculty member Larry Wolfe and TMC students, who did a fun rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

GASB guitarist Pat Donaghue played a beautiful re-worked version of Mississippi John Hurt’s “Louis Collins” in honor of Hurt’s 111th birthday, and also led the band in a beautiful composition of his own, the “Tanglewood Waltz.”