Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood, Lenox, MA
August 5, 12, & 19, 2024
by Michael J. Moran
The last three TMCO concerts presented the two 2024 TMC conducting fellows with new opportunities: vocal music, contemporary works, and replacing a missing conductor.
On August 5, TMC fellow Na’Zir McFadden led a touchingly vivid account of Maurice Ravel’s four-movement 1920 tribute to victims of World War I, “Le Tombeau de Couperin.” TMC fellow Ross Jamie Collins shaped a brilliant reading of Silvestre Revueltas’s 1938 tone poem “Sensemaya,” which fully captured its ritualistic Afro-Latin sensuality. American BSO guest conductor Alan Gilbert skillfully guided the TMCO through the complex rhythms and shifting colors of Henri Dutilleux’s 1964 “Metaboles” (“Transformations”), making this challenging piece surprisingly accessible. He then poked hilarious fun at himself and the audience with a playful rendition of Joseph Haydn’s 1788 Symphony No. 90, with its several surprise endings.
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| Photo by Hillary Scott |
Magic Flute,” “Don Giovanni,” and “The Marriage of Figaro” for a delightful “Mozart Opera Evening.” Collins cued the singers and instrumentalists more extravagantly than McFadden, whose more economical gestures drew equally compelling performances. Standouts included: soprano Emily Rocha’s devastating “Ach, ich fuhl’s” (“Ah, I feel it”) as a hopeless Pamina in “The Magic Flute;” a seductive “La ci darem la mano” (“Give me your hand”) from baritone John Arlievsky as a suave Don Giovanni and mezzo-soprano Anna Maria Vacca as a befuddled Zerlina; and a hilarious “Voi, che sapete” (“You who know”) by mezzo-soprano Carmen Edano as a lovestruck teenage Cherubino in “The Marriage of Figaro.” English subtitles were helpfully projected above the stage.
McFadden and Collins faced a new challenge on August 19, when Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, who would have led Sergei Prokofiev’s 1945 fifth symphony, cancelled his Tanglewood appearances due to a recent leg injury. Their ingenious solution was for each of them to lead two of its four movements. McFadden’s more restrained conducting style produced a vibrant first movement (“Andante”) and a haunting third (“Adagio”), while Collins’s flashier style inspired a driving second movement (“Allegro moderato”) and an exuberant finale (“Allegro giocoso”). The result was a powerfully cohesive vision of the Russian composer’s heroic masterpiece.
That concert opened with Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s six-minute folk-inflected 2021 “Kauyumari” (“Blue Deer”), representing a spiritual guide for the Huichol people of Mexico, in a visceral reading under McFadden. Next came a sensitive account, also under McFadden, of British-American composer Bernard Rands’s equally brief but bracing “Adieu,” for brass quintet and string orchestra, in honor of the composer’s recent 90th birthday. The program’s first half concluded with an electrifying Collins-led rendition by the TMCO of Jean Sibelius’s 1892 tone poem “En Saga,” evoking the spirit of Finnish folklore.
The past eight weeks of intensive concerts, professional training, and musical camaraderie, including their major role in the annual Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, will surely be formative experiences in these young musicians’ careers.
