tangle42

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Arts Tanglewood on Parade by Dave Sear Everyone loves a parade. Tanglewood On Parade is the day that the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, along with ensembles created from the musical forces of these formidable organizations, get to strut their stuff in a day-long, wide range of programs at Tanglewood, the Berkshire summer home of the Boston Symphony.

The festivities began when Keith Lockhart, the engaging, gracious and laid-back conductor of the Boston Pops, strode onto the stage, swatted a fly from his head and picked up the microphone to introduce “The Four Freedoms”, a symphony after four paintings by Norman Rockwell, composed by the American composer Robert Russell Bennett.

The inspiration for the Norman Rockwell paintings and the symphony came from Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address. With the world threatened by the spread of fascism, Rockwell and Bennett created these moving tributes to our cherished freedoms of speech and worship, and freedom from want and from fear. The presentation was a multi-media event, with the Boston Pops accompanying a narrated video of Rockwell's paintings.

The Bennett work was followed by John Williams conducting the Pops in music from his scores from the sound tracks of “Harry Potter” and “The Terminal”. His well-composed and appealing music is a treat for the ears when unencumbered by the visual distractions of the movies. The oboe parts from the Potter film were warm and haunting. Victor's Tale from “The Terminal” turned out to be a concerto for clarinet, expertly played by Thomas Martin. The Eastern European and almost Klezmer sound of the music made the work a very enjoyable addition to the program.

Keith Lockhart brought all of the musical forces together in Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, with cannons exploding on the lawn in what has been a tradition at Tanglewood for many years.

The program ended with John Williams' beautifully arranged, stirring orchestration of The Star Spangled Banner, which brought the audience singing to its feet. This was followed by a grand display of fireworks.

At the end of the summer Keith Lockhart brought the Boston Pops back to Tanglewood with the multi-talented singer, dancer and actress Kristin Chenoweth in tow where they proceeded to elevate the music of the Broadway Stage to a new level of elegance. A rousing “There's No Business Like Show Business” was followed with the introduction of Ms. Chenoweth, who appeared on stage in a short low cut dress and proceeded to dazzle the audience. She went from being as dizzy as Sarah Jessica Parker in her most ditzy roles in Sex in the City in numbers like “Glitter and Be Gay”, from Candide, to other numbers where she displayed her considerable vocal skills from jazz to opera, and danced and acted out a wide range of music from the Broadway stage to the delight of this reviewer and the audience. The evening ended with a rousing rendition of “Stars and Stripes” which brought the audience clapping to its feet.

The next evening Tanglewood presented, from the UK, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) to a packed crowd in Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood's chamber music venue. The OAE is one of the worlds leading baroque orchestras, featuring period instruments. The concert opened with the J.S. Bach Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C. After a short period of adjustment to the white sound of most period baroque ensembles, by the time the music reached the second movement courante, one could feel and taste the bite of the two baroque oboes as they blended with the bassoon in a delightful trio where the bassoon was uncharacteristically racing against the slower voices of the oboes. If anything could be better than two oboes it was the Telemann Concerto in B-flat for three oboes and three violins. The program also included three of the six Brandenburg Concertos and ended with the fifth where the cadenza for harpsichord turned out to be a tour de force which Bach must have written for himself. I could envision him conducting the work from the harpsichord. The orchestra was conductorless and skillfully led by first violinist Rachel Podger.

Tanglewood is also the home of the Tanglewood Music Center, which brings talented young musicians from all over the world together to study and perform. Conducted by James DePreist, the TMC orchestra presented Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto with Garrick Ohlsson at the keyboard. It is interesting to note that this work was first performed with Beethoven himself at the keyboard and is a tour de force for the soloist. Mr. Ohlsson peformed flawlessly. The student orchestra under James DePreist did a first rate job of supporting the soloist.

As the season began to wind down to its final weekend Itzhak Perlman took the stage with Charles Dutiot on the podium for what turned out to be a somewhat sleepy rendition of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. This was in contrast to Mr. Perlman's first performance of the work, making his debut with the Boston Symphony as a young man years ago, where the performance was electric, establishing Mr. Perlman as one of the truly great violinists of the world. His cadenzas in this most recent performance continue to dazzle and the first and last movements were the high points of the work, with brilliance, tension and magnificent double stops, but Beethoven was still the star with some of the most gorgeous themes in music.

The final concert of the season was Beethoven's concerto for timpani and orchestra, better known as his Ninth Symphony. This reviewer is always aware of the underlying role of the timpani in punctuating and bringing to life orchestral music but never more so then in this performance of Beethoven's greatest work. The conductor was Hans Graf and the piece featured the ringing bell-like voice and forceful performance of tenor Gordon Gietz. As always the show was stolen by the glorious singing of the hundred-plus voices of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Beethoven's setting of Schiller's Ode To Joy.

It is always sad when the Tanglewood season ends but we can look forward to another one next year. You can check on the Web next January by going to www.tanglewood.org , the web site of the Boston Symphony. As the leaves come back on the trees in the spring and the Berkshires bloom again there will be another glorious summer of music at Tanglewood.