Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra bows out - brilliantly

August 22, 2004 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Conductor James DePriest

The Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra gave the best performance of its life Sunday August 22 and then dis-banded, which was the plan when they assembled seven weeks ago from hometowns such asTashkent, Uzbekistan; Zhejiang, China; Ordaz, Venezuela; and West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, - an orchestra-full of the world's most promising young musicians, gathered at Tanglewood, for a summer of scholarship, performance and fellowship in the Berkshires.

These musicians, destined to populate America's leading orchestras, will share certain memories of 2004, such as residencies with the Mark Morris Dance Group, Seiji Ozawa's return for the 10th anniversary of Ozawa Hall, and performances of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Their valedictory performance in the Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert was a thoroughly enjoyable program of Beethoven's piano Concerto No. 4 in G, with soloist Garrick Ohlsson, followed by and Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D, both conducted by James DePriest.

Piano soloist Garrick Ohlsson

DePriest, who also conducted this concert in 2000, is the nephew of Marian Anderson and a frequent visitor to Tanglewood since making his debut here in 1973. He got an early boost to his career in 1965 when Bernstein chose him to be assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Today he is Director of Conducting and Orchestal Studies at the Julliard School.

The orchestra were brilliant in their support of Garrick Ohlsson's thrilling animation of Beethoven's concerto and heroic in execution of Mahler's symphony. The performance invited one to ruminate on the genius of the composers and on the magic of music that allows for such as this - a one-time-only assembly of artists whose dedication to their talents gifts several thousand strangers with an afternoon of enrichment and ineffable pleasure.