Like the first wave of bright and prosperous Americans, the Boston Symphony Orchestra found a second home in the the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. But, unlike its bright and prosperous counterparts, the BSO lacks the false modesty to call it a cottage; instead, they use the neologism coined by another refugee from the east, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who thus named the locale of his productive but unhappy Berkshires sojourn.
Highlights from the 2024 Tanglewood season
Here are excerpts from pieces about the late Tanglewood season. I’ve been writing about music there since the last summer of the 20th century, not to get all dramatic about it. I’m a little less restive than I used to be, actually a little less across the board, but 2 or 3 times this summer I swear I heard the most beautiful concerts ever given anywhere!
Renee Fleming, BSO, Nelsons, Strauss
Renee Fleming has been a favorite of Tanglewood audiences since her debut … in 1991. Under the direction of Maestro Andris Nelsons, in concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, today she sang songs written for performance with music composed by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). …during Gesang der Apollopriesterin, Opus 33 No. 2, Ms. Fleming produced with her instrument sounds so refulgent that the instruments of the brass section turned green with envy.
Charles Ives – Three Places in New England
The program opened with Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1), composed by Charles Ives (1874-1954), an insurance executive who composed music for personal edification… Ives paid to have it performed in Cuba and Europe by the BSO, but the glorious composition, which pays better and more lasting tribute to the Berkshires than a barrel of p.r. professionals ever could, wasn’t performed here until 2007.
Boston Symphony celebrates Koussevitsky 150 at Tanglewood
Maestro Koussevitsky (1874-1951) was soloist when the symphony was premiered in Moscow in 1905. Somehow, tonight marks its Tanglewood debut. Let’s hope there’s a more reasonable interval before it’s heard again in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, at the heart of Koussevitskyania, a.k.a. Tanglewood.
Glorius conclusion to BSO’s Koussevitsky 150 celebration
When Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons opened the second part of the program that would close the orchestra’s weekend celebration of the 150th anniversary of Serge Koussevitsky’s birth, he made a conductor’s decision that, in my mind, created a new work by the merging of two discrete compositions.
Gerstein’s rock star turn at Tanglewood
Absent as nature has been from the positive side of promotion of outdoors entertainment in the Berkshires this Tanglewood season, on a rainy night, near the end of a rainy week, a small audience collected in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, where a concert of music was performed that sounded as good to me as if Calliope, Muse of Music, were in the house.
Mozart, Mahler and musical magic at Tanglewood
Making their BSO debuts were conductor James Gaffigan, a 2003 alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center, and soprano Elana Villalón. Maestro Gaffigan’s emphatic, dramatic style was neatly balance by Ms. Villalón’s subtle expressiveness.
Midori plays Prokofiev’s Violin concert at Tanglewood
Another felicitous program choice makes this concert especially memorable. Guest conductor Samy Rachid led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Prokofiev’s Violin concerto No. 1 in D, Opus 19, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. The decision to open the program with a brief “Symphonic Picture,” Dawn in the Field, by Yevgeny Svetlanov (1928-2002), amounted to the ideal appetizer for a sumptuous concert.
Yo-Yo Ma plays Schumann’s Cello concerto at Tanglewood
It made for a particularly touching moment, when departing BSO assistant conductor Earl Lee told the audience the role Mr. Ma played in his early musical development. As a boy in southern South Korea, after telling his parents he would like to play cello, he was given a laser disc titled Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood!
Beethoven’s Ninth erases history again
Today, last minute replacement conductor Ludovic Morlot elicited a nonpareil performance from the orchestra, whose multitude of sound melded seamlessly with the poetry of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy to send the audience, now practically levitated from their seats, into the after-Tanglewood chapter of their year.