Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in July and August, there are concerts in the Tanglewood Shed, mostly with the Boston Symphony playing, some memorable, some not. So here are my impressions:
Kurt Masur conducting Prokofiev (Symphony No.1, Violin Concerto No.1 with Joshua Bell) and Beethoven (Symphony No,1, and two days later Mozart's last three symphonies, 39, 40, and 41. Mr. Mazur turned 80 a couple of weeks earlier. My impression is that the BSO always plays Mozart and Beethoven better under him. (I didn't like their performing these composer at all when Seiji Ozawa was the orchestra's music director, but it has improved some under Levine.) In any case, both concerts were great, and Joshua Bell his usual excellent self.
In between we had a concert version of Verdi's Don Carlo, with James Levine conducting the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, which by the way had a greater work-out than ever this season. I don't like Verdi operas particularly, but this performance had me riveted. Among others, the scene between the king and the inquisitor was totally chilling! Act IV however, I thought was a let-down in the opera construction, and I knew again why I don't like Verdi …
All three concerts were written up in the Times, with photos:
Two concerts at this venerable summer festival in the Berkshires made music, but were also opportunities to see how Kurt Masur and James Levine were getting along.
The following Saturday and Sunday were billed as NL: A Season of Dutch Arts in the Berkshires. Edo de Waart was supposed to conduct, there was performance of a commissioned piece by a Dutch composer, and and Dutch violinist was supposed to play. Well, it didn't go quite as planned, first de Waart had to cancel because of a back injury, and then the violinist Janine Janson became ill. Saturdays all-Dvořák concert was taken over by James Levine. Yo-Y0-Ma played the Cello Concerto in B minor, ordinarily one of my favorite pieces, but it really didn't grab me this time. So over breakfast on Sunday I opined that it might be heresy, but that our local symphony did not have the funds to engage word famous artists with the result that we often get to hear extraordinary new young talents. No sooner said, Sunday afternoon comes around and we are greeted with the notice that Janine Jansen had been replaced with young Stefan Jackiw, whom we had heard in Beethoven's Violin Concerto last January in Stamford! He admirably played Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor and got a standing ovation.
The ersatz conductor on Sunday was Ludovic Morlot, Assistant Conductor of the BSO. The only Dutch event that remained was the world premiere of Robin de Raaf's Entangled Tales for Orchestra, commissioned by the BSO. I enjoyed it, and here is a review from the Boston Globe.
The following Sunday, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducted. Emanuel Ax beautifully played Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9., and after the intermission, there was Haydn's Mass No. 10, Mass in the Time of War, which I had never heard before and really liked.
There was another concert I enjoyed. Besides the Tanglewood Music Center, there is the Tanglewood Institute (BUTI), a summer program for musically gifted high schools students from all over the world. I had a free night and drove over to the Ozawa Hall. The Young Artists Orchestra under Paul Haas played Corigliani's Elegy for Orchestra, short excerpts from Monteverdi's Vespro della beata vergine, and after the intermission there was a respectable performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 5.
There is also chamber music in the local churches, and on my last night I went to hear members of the Curtisville Consortium, current and former BSO musicians, play the Beethoven Quartet Opus 5 and Dvořák's Quartet in F major. They and the audience had great fun despite stifling heat in the church, only a little alleviated by to stand-up electric fans. I almost always find that there is a special ambiance in chamber music playing in small surroundings.
And last Sunday, as noted before, we went for the day to listen to Beethoven's Ninth, and I found to my chagrin that Friday night there had been a performance of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and on Saturday Berlioz' The Damnation of Faust. Oh well, one must not be greedy …
