Berkshires arts reviews

July 6, and 14 concerts reviewed by Dave Conlin Read.

(There are 3 sets of Tanglewood photos from July 14 on LenoxMap.com.)

Maestro James Levine, on July 6, opened his third Tanglewood season as Music Director of the B.S.O. with Mendelssohn’s Overture and Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream followed by Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, a program that moved nicely from the diaphanous to the dense.

Accompanying the B.S.O. were soprano Heidi Grant Murphy, mezzo-soprano Kristine Jepson and the women of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver conductor.

Maestro James Levine. Copyright NewBerkshire.com, photos by Kit Latham. More photos: July 14 2007 at Tanglewood.

Levine was nimble at the podium, half-sitting on a tall red-cushioned chair, sometimes laying down the baton, often cueing his charges with what looks like scat-singing, and always exuding an engaging buoyancy and exuberance.

The B.S.O. made equisite sounds with Mendelsshon’s composition; from the faint, whispy notes of the fairy music to the bold, melodious Wedding March. Especially affecting was the seamless transition after Ms. Murphy’s enchanted solo.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 was a delightful contrast, riveting the audience’s attention with it’s opening brass and woodwind fanfare, which Levine and the orchestra held throughout the composer’s exploration of fate.

As the composer wrote to his patron and the dedicatee of this symphony, “This is fate, this is the fateful force which prevents the impulse to happiness from attaining its goal.”

(Stephanie Blythe and James Levine. Copyright NewBerkshire.com. )

For his second program of the season, on July 14, Maestro Levine re-called the women of the T.F.C. to accompany the B.S.O., mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, and the American Boychoir, Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, music director, to perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3.

This Tanglewood visit showed the venerable enterprise at its most charming: warm, sunny, and breezy with thousands of happy lawnsters and a tent full of pastel-clad swells up by Ozawa Hall during the 6pm Prelude concert.

(Patrons on the Lawn at Tanglewood. Copyright NewBerkshire.com. More photos: July 14 2007 at Tanglewood.)

The fate that had Tchaikovsky on the ropes must’ve been present somewhere in the Mahler, because, as he said, in rebuttal to Sibelius, “No, a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.”

It’s a bit beyond our ken, contemplating the ideas that underlie such beautiful compositions. So is the execution of them, for that matter. But we claim competency in the enjoyment of it all, and do marvel, with gratefulness, the artistry as that on display throughout the season at Tanglewood.

I haven’t seen a soul all summer who looks as carefree and happy as does James Levine, and I’ve only seen him while he’s at work, a job which requires him to make 100 or so way-above-average human beings — well, play nice.

And of course, it all starts with the composer and all that entails, about which Alex Ross has an interesting article in the July 9 New Yorker:

“Composing music may be the loneliest of artistic pursuits. It is a laborious traversal of an imaginary landscape. Emerging from the process is an art work in code, which other musicians must be persuaded to unravel. Nameless terrors creep into the limbo between composition and performance, during which a score sits mutely on the desk. Hans Pfitzner dramatized that moment of panic and doubt in “Palestrina,” his 1917 “musical legend” about the life of the Italian Renaissance master. The character of Palestrina speaks for colleagues across the centuries when he stops his work to cry, “What is the point of all this? Ach, what is it for?”

It may be for more, but, at least, it is for your pleasure and mine, to afford us cause to maybe assemble a small group of friends and spend a few hours feeling relaxed and at home in this rich setting, invited to contemplate great big ideas while watching handsome artists at work make something beautiful and dazzling and fleeting, something that can be transforming, that can carry us away and that we can carry away with a refreshed, emboldened, encouraged spirit.

Tags: No Comments