rain ruins Ozawa return for lawnsters

August 1, 2004 performance, by Dave Conlin Read

For many in the audience, including us, the Seiji Ozawa Hall Tenth Anniversary celebration will be recorded in the weather section of the Tanglewood story, alongside the concert/deluge of 1937 that led to the building of the Shed, because, during the program's opening segment, just moments after mezz-soprano Stephanie Blythe sang "...but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground - " a persistent storm of rain, thunder, and lightning commenced that wouldn't abate until the huge audience on the lawn was all but washed away.

We reached the saturation point aroung 9:40, by which time the musical proceedings were barely discernable from the lawn because of the thunder and noise of rain on umbrellas, tarps, and tents. Of course, the first bolts of lightning should've chased us all away, but they didn't.

We were able to enjoy Seiji Ozawa's entrance and performance conducting the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in Takemitsu's "Ceremonial: An Autumnal Ode," with Mayumi Miyata soloing on the sho (an instrument similar to a panpipe). Maestro Ozawa looked like he was returning from two weeks at Canyon Ranch rather than two years in old Europe. Besides looking perfectly happy and relaxed, and sculpturally coiffed, his always-balletic conducting style tonight resembled Tai Chi in its fluid precision of motion and gentle forcefulness of gesture.

This was especially evident when he would turn from the orchestra, as if with armsful of musical spirit, to direct it throughout the Hall, making motions to push it up to the farthest reaches from the stage, and ending his slow turn 180 degrees later, peer out over the audience into the distance.

Stephanie Blythe's prominent role tonight was most apt because her singing provided the music for the first acoustical tests of Ozawa Hall while she was still a Tanglewood fellow in 1994.

Maestro Ozawa, in the middle of a five year contract as Director of the Vienna State Opera, had just four days in the Berkshires, having come from the Salzburg Festival in Austria and heading next to his own Saito Kinen Festival in Japan.