damp drenched but undaunted, a memorable Tanglewood on Parade

August 5, 2003 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Tanglewood on Parade got rained on big-time this year, which is a major bummer because of the loss of TMC-supporting ticket revenue from the great big audience it usually attracts to the lawn, and also because of the diminished audience for all the student performances throughout the afternoon and early evening.

Nonetheless, 10,251 hearty souls did attend and the evening's big event in the Koussevitzky Music Shed was well-worth the drenching. The program was a very entertaining one, keeping one in the moment and not too eager for the grand finale cannonade.

First up were the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, conducted by TMC alumnus (and TMC faculty since 1995) Stefan Asbury, which demonstrated how useful their summer's been with a very professional rendition of Benjamin Britten's A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, as apt a composition as there could be for this concert.

Afterward, maestro Asbury beckoned the musicians to rise for acknowledgment, section by section; the audience showered them with applause, then they sat again for a moment, many no doubt imagining the not-so-distant day when they will return as members of one of the world's greatest orchestras.

The varsity then took the stage, along with the itinerant conductor Charles Dutoit, for George Bizet's L'Arlesienne, Suite No. 2, four delightful and lively numbers based on traditional French provincial themes that originated as incidental music for a short-lived play. The concluding Farandole includes the majestic Christmas carol, "March of the Kings."

After intermission came the Boston Pops and their conductor Keith Lockhart, who offerred "bravos and Purple Heart commendations to everybody - your clothes will dry in time but your shoes will be goners!" They played George Gershwin's "An American in Paris," giving it a splendid reading, with especially evocative playing by the tromboneists and an entirely satisfying coda.

Lockhart then passed the baton back to his predecessor, John Williams, who introduced his friend, James Taylor, who would narrate William Faulkner's The Reivers to the score arranged by Mr. Williams for his opening concert, in 1980, as conductor of the Boston Pops.

This is movie music that allows the auditor to draw upon memory rather that fantasy and with Taylor's avuncular reading from Faulkner's only comic novel, and the orchestra's beautiful playing, we were swept away. Voicing the ruminations of an eleven year old who's just been shook loose from the torpor of childhood, Taylor animated Faulkner's prose so well that I saw myself in the vanished environs of childhood.

All of which amounted to ample entertainment and elucidation for one evening, but, of course, served as mere prelude to the annual blow-out, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, performed by about 1812 professional and student musicians and a handful of volunteer cannoneers. It was a blast.

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