Tanglewood 2007 Preview
Tanglewood 2007 tickets go on sale Sunday, February 11
By: Michael Miller - Feb 09, 2007
This year's Tanglewood Festival will be an ambitious one. Music Director James Levine will be in residence for six of its eight weeks and will conduct eleven concerts, and there will be several operatic performances, of which one, Mozart's Così Fan Tutte, will be fully staged. Another special feature will be a prominent Dutch element—the music of Dutch composers and several important Dutch conductors, soloists, and ensembles, as part of a summer-long, Berkshires-wide program, "NL: A Season of Dutch Arts in the Berkshires." In addition to Tanglewood, Mass MoCA, Bang on a Can, Jacob's Pillow, and the Clark Art Institute will collaborate with leading Dutch artists to showcase the arts and culture of the Netherlands.
The season will open on Friday June 29 with a performance of Henry Purcell's masque, Dido and Aeneas conducted by Stefan Asbury with the Mark Morris Dance Group. Maestro Levine will pick up the theatrical thread on the official opening night, Friday, July 6 with a concert which will include Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. On Tuesday July 10, Keith Lockhart will conduct the Boston Pops in a concert performance of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel. Even the All-Beethoven weekend (July 20-22) will include all three Leonore Overtures, "Abscheulicher, wo eilst Du hin?" from Fidelio, and the concert aria "Ah, Perfido!," both sung by Christine Brewer, who excelled as Leonore in Sir Colin Davis' 2006 London concert performance of Fidelio, now available as a recording in the LSO Live series (soon to be reviewed in BFA). On Saturday, July 28, Levine will lead the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in a concert performance of the four-act version of Verdi's Don Carlo. Then, on August 11, 12, and 14, he will conduct the TMC Orchestra and the TMC Vocal Fellows in the fully-staged production of Mozart's Così Fan Tutte. The TMC Conducting Fellow will lead the August 13 performance. On Friday, August 17 Maestro Levine will conduct the BSO in yet another opera, Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. Berlioz' légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, could be considered an opera as well. In fact Berlioz originally called it an opéra de concert. I wouldn't advise you to miss any of these performances, but if you can only go to one, I suppose Verdi's monumental Don Carlo will have to be it, particularly if you haven't seen it at the Met under Levine. This amazing schedule of opera certainly marks a further step in the reallocation of Tanglewood's resources in the direction of Maestro Levine's lifelong passion. This is splendid news. Last year's Don Giovanni was both extremely popular and of high quality. However, opera-lovers shouldn't forget the Berkshire Opera or the Aston Magna Festival, which will present Purcell's Dido and Aeneas on August 3 and 4, using original instruments and historical performance practices.
Tanglewood will also do justice to historically informed performance with two evenings each by the much-acclaimed Netherlands Bach Society under Jos van Veldhoven and the superb Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century under Frans Brüggen. The NBS will perform Bach's Mass in B minor and an evening of secular cantatas, and the OEC will offer Schubert's Eighth and Ninth Symphonies as well as a concert pairing a suite from Rameau's Les Indes Galantes and Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto with the wonderful Dutch fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout and the Fifth Symphony. I have heard their Schubert Ninth both in the hall and on disc and can assure you it is a revelation, both in respect to the texture of the score and as music-making on period instruments at its most distinguished and at its most energetic. Also the great Hespèrion XXI will perform in Seiji Ozawa Hall on Thursday, July 12, under their director Jordi Savall a program of music of Jews, Christians, and Muslims at the time of King Alfonso X of Castille, 1221-1284. That should also be one of the pinnacles of the season.
Maestro Levine will also repeat his spring performance of Mahler's Third Symphony, as well as a number of varied programs of mostly nineteenth and twentieth century music. Among the other conductors, André Previn, who was absent last year, will be back, as well as Edo de Waart, who has excelled with the BSO in the past, as part of "NL," in an all-Dvořák concert with Yo-Yo Ma playing the Cello Concerto, as well as a program which will include a new piece by the Dutch Composer Robin de Raaff, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony (Yes, that eminent patient of Sigmund Freud is back!). Kurt Masur will lead the BSO in Mozart's three last symphonies. Mark Elder, Music Director of the Hallé Orchestra, will conduct two varied programs, one including Shostakovich's First Symphony, and another with baritone Thomas Hampson singing Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer and Delius' Cynara, as well as a third, all-Beethoven program with the excellent pianist Imogen Cooper in the Third Piano Concerto. Finally, I'm delighted to report that Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos will conduct four concerts this summer, if you count "Tanglewood on Parade. (August 15)." His programs will include Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, Schumann's Third Symphony, Haydn's Mass in Time of War, and what will surely be a memorable performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Soloists will include the popular Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, Lynn Harrell, Leon Fleisher, Imogen Cooper, Richard Goode, Emanual Ax, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who will also perform an interesting solo recital, which will included Bach's Art of Fugue and pieces by Carter and Benjamin. The Emerson String Quartet will perform Beethoven's Quartets op. 130 and 132, and the Juiliard String Quartet will play Bartok's Quartets, nos. 2, 4, and 6.
At the Festival of Contemporary Music the Generation of '38 will be celebrated. Performances at the festival will feature works from composers born in that year, including William Bolcom, John Corigliano, John Harbison, Joan Tower, Charles Wuorinen, and others.
It should be an exciting summer and a step forward and upward for Tanglewood, although I'll miss Herbert Blomstedt.