by Michael J. Moran
A survey of four concerts at Tanglewood so far this season
brings to mind at least two distinctions that set this summer home of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra apart from many other music festivals: the diversity
of its programming; and the wide age range of both its performers and its
audience.
Before the official BSO season opened in the Koussevitzky
Music Shed, for example, Keith Lockhart led his Boston Pops (which includes
many BSO members) in a wide-ranging program entitled “Simply Sondheim” of
mostly vocal selections by the greatest living composer/lyricist for the
musical theater, Stephen Sondheim. Featured Broadway stars Kate Baldwin and
Jason Danieley were both in glorious voice, but the six Tanglewood music
fellows who joined them were equally impressive at the start of their promising
careers. Special kudos go to baritone Davone Tines for his comic and dramatic
turns respectively in “The Woman’s Mine” from “A Little Night Music” and
“Losing My Mind” from “Follies.” The music thrived from the full symphonic
treatment rarely accorded to Broadway scores.
In the more intimate Ozawa Hall, the Boston Symphony Chamber
Players (nine BSO members) and pianist Randall Hodgkinson opened their concert
with a 2014 BSO commission, “Why Old Places Matter,” for oboe, horn, and piano
by 32-year-old former Tanglewood Music Center fellow Eric Nathan, who took a
bow after the lively performance of this charming piece. The program concluded
with sparkling accounts of Nielsen’s Quintet for Winds and a chamber
arrangement of Brahms’ orchestral Serenade No. 1.
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| Koussevitzky Music Shed, Tanglewood |
At “85 years young” (according to the program notes),
legendary American pianist Leon Fleisher was the star of another Ozawa Hall
concert, which also featured his wife and piano-duo partner Katherine Jacobson.
After glowing accounts by Fleisher of short pieces by Bach and Debussy, the duo
offered lovely four-hands renditions of Brahms’s first set of “Liebeslieder”
Waltzes and Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor and closed with a shattering version
of Ravel’s “La Valse.” It was heartening to see so many students in the
audience whom Fleisher may have taught in his many years on the Tanglewood
Music Center faculty.
But the biggest crowd so far at Ozawa Hall turned out for
the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, whose leader, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, was
also a genial host. Their repertoire included both classics, like Wayne
Shorter’s ballad “Contemplation” in a touching arrangement by LCJO saxophone
player Ted Nash and original compositions by band members like trombonist Chris
Crenshaw, who also joined fellow trombonist Vincent Gardner in showing off
their vocal chops.
The second installment of this three-part series will appear
next week.
