Tanglewood Off and Running
A Jump Start with Krall, Tchaikovsky, and Rites of Spring
By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 01, 2009
This week members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra took off from Boston Symphony Hall in a robust relay race to the Tanglewood campus in Lenox. It appears to be the first ever cross state event. Keith Lockhart started them off with a trumpet fanfare but did not appear to take a leg in the athletic event. He will arrive for summer Pops concerts by more conventional transportation.
On Monday night we got a jump on the gala opening of the season with an all Sibelius program at Ozawa Hall. The Official Opening Night Gala occurs on Friday, July 3 with music director James Levine conducting an all Tchaikovsky program.
It has become a Tanglewood tradition in the past few years that Berkshire resident, James Taylor, sets off the fireworks on the Fourth of July. But this time there is a switch off. The recording artist, Diana Krall, and the Argentine singer/ songwriter, Federeico Aubele, will open the popular music programming for the season and James Taylor will run the anchor leg to close things down at the end of August. That marks the end of the regular season which will be followed by the Tanglewood Jazz Festival over Labor Day. By then the BSO musicians will have sprinted home.
One of the most anticipated events of the Tanglewood season, at least for me, will occur on Sunday, July 5, at 2:30 when Levine conducts Stravinsky's 1913, modernist masterpiece "Le Sacred du Printemps (The Rites of Spring)." My absolutely favorite piece of music caused riots when it was first presented in Paris with the choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky and sets by Nicholas Roerich. There were a few performances in Paris, followed by a few more in London, before the dance for the Ballets Russes was largely forgotten. It sustained as an every more popular orchestral work. A remastered version was staged by the New York City Ballet and there have been other interpretations.
The production of Rites of Spring largely defined the mandate of modernism in 20th century music. While responded to as largely unbearable at the time, by a conservative audience, ironically, today it is considered one of the master's most exciting and accessible works.
The evening of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), surely a much anticipated evening for appreciators of the Finnish composer, was an insightful means of getting reacquainted with Tanglewood. It combined all the best aspects of the music festival.
The first selection conducted by TMC Fellow, Ryan McAdams was the richly descriptive and bucolic "The Swan of Tuonela" from Four Legends from the "Kalevala," Opus 22. The plaintive voice of the swan was evoked by the gorgeous playing of an English horn by Zachary Boeding. The essence of nature wafted from the surrounding woods and shimmering breezes into Ozawa Hall. The second selection, with a change to Gergely Madras, another TMC Fellow conducting an orchestra of fellows, continued references to nature with appropriate coloration in "Tapiola" a Tone Poem, Opus 112.
Erik Tawaststjerna, wrote that "Even by Nordic standards, Sibelius responded with exceptional intensity to the moods of nature and the changes in the seasons. He scanned the skies with his binoculars for the geese flying over the lake ice, listened to the screech of the cranes, and heard the cries of the curlew echo over the marshy grounds just below Ainola. He savored the spring blossoms every bit as much as he did autumnal scents and colors."
For the final segment of the program the Sibelius specialist, Herbert Blomstedt, conducted Symphony No, 2 in D, Opus 43 (1902). He made an odd presence on the podium with angular gestures but great precision in accenting the complex score with its many shifts and surprises. This work, which hovers between the classical and the modernism which was to follow in his later compositions, is a bit disconcerting to follow. It has its unexpected thunder claps of Wagnerian sturm und drang. It seems that Sibelius was working through ideas that were not entirely resolved in his Second Symphony. He completed his seventh and last symphony in 1926.
Below are listing of events of the coming weekend. It represents a richly varied start to what will surely be another magnificent Tanglewood season. For the folks with blankets under the stars let us hope it finally stops raining. It would be nice to have a bit of summer.
FRIDAY, JULY 3
OPENING NIGHT AT TANGLEWOOD, 8:30 P.M., SHED
BSO Music Director James Levine leads the orchestra in an all-Tchaikovsky program, beginning with the composer's Symphony No. 6, Pathétique. Grammy-winning pianist Yefim Bronfman, known for his lyrical gifts and virtuosic technical facility, is the soloist for the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1.
SATURDAY, JULY 4
DIANA KRALL FOURTH OF JULY CONCERT, WITH
FEDERICO AUBELE, 7 .P.M., SHED
Double platinum-selling recording artist Diana Krall brings her award-winning artistry to Tanglewood for one of the highlights of the summer, the annual Fourth of July concert. Krall is a singer and pianist known for her distinctive jazz stylings across a range of repertoire, especially tunes from the American songbook. The evening's opener is Argentine singer/songwriter Federico Aubele, who infuses a variety of musical styles, from reggae to hip hop, with the sensuous Latin rhythms of his native Buenos Aires. The evening ends with a bang, as Tanglewood offers patrons its traditional July 4 display of brilliant fireworks.
SUNDAY, JULY 5
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA,
JAMES LEVINE, CONDUCTOR, 2:30 P.M., SHED
BSO Music Director James Levine conducts the orchestra in one of the 20th century's most groundbreaking works, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The program also includes Brahms' great Violin Concerto, with German violinist Christian Tetzlaff as soloist. Musical America's "Musician of the Year" in 2005, Tetzlaff is acclaimed for his musical integrity, technical assurance, and intelligent, compelling interpretations.
SUNDAY JULY 5, TUESDAY JULY 7, & THURSDAY JULY 9
CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF AND ALEXANDER LONQUICH PERFORM THE COMPLETE BEETHOVEN SONATAS FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO
The evening of July 5, Christian Tetzlaff, internationally recognized as one of the most important violinists of his generation, and renowned German pianist Alexander Lonquich, in his Tanglewood debut, play the first of three concerts in Ozawa Hall offering the exceptional opportunity to hear back-to-back performances of Beethoven's complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano: Program 1 (Sonatas 1-4, July 5); Program 2 (Sonatas 5-7, July 7); and Program 3 (Sonatas 8-10, July 9). These masterful works chart Beethoven's development as a composer from 1797 to 1812.
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