REVIEW: Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, "4 Concerts"

Tanglewood, Lenox, MA

www.bso.org/tanglewood

July 7, 14, 24 & 28, 2025

by Michael J. Moran

Yiran Zhao, Photo: Hilary Scott

Each summer over 100 young musicians starting their careers, from across and beyond the US, gather for eight weeks at Tanglewood, where, tutored by Boston Symphony Orchestra members and visiting artists, they soon begin to sound as if they’ve been playing together for years. Four recent concerts by 2025’s TMCO confirmed the power of this training model.    

TMC conducting fellows Australian Leonard Weiss and American Yiran Zhao shared leadership duties at these concerts with BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons (July 7) and BSO guest conductor Thomas Ades (July 14).

Weiss opened the first concert with an alternately stirring and reflective account of “The High Castle,” the first of six tone poems in Czech composer Bedrich Smetana’s 1874-79 cycle “My Country.” Zhao followed with a colorful and dramatic reading of “The Moldau,” also from “My Country.” Nelsons closed the program with a buoyant rendition of Johannes Brahms’ 1877 second symphony, including a mercurial “Allegro non troppo,” serene “Adagio non troppo,” charming “Allegretto grazioso,” and exuberant “Allegro con spirito” finale.

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As part of Tanglewood’s celebration of French composer Maurice Ravel’s 150th birth anniversary this year, Weiss began the second concert with a sensitive take on the Suite from Ravel’s fanciful 1911 ballet, “Mother Goose.” Zhao led a sweeping second suite from Ravel’s more opulent score of the same year for his ballet “Daphnis and Chloe.” Ades drew laser-focused playing from the TMCO that made Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet “The Rite of Spring” sound strikingly modern.

The focus of the 2025 Festival of Contemporary Music was on Mexican music, and FCM Director Gabriela Ortiz included many pieces by her teachers, herself, and her students on its five programs. Highlights of the July 24 opening concert were: Ortiz’s eerily evocative “Rio Bravo,” featuring TMC fellows Danielle Romano, mezzo-soprano, and three percussionists “playing” six tuned wine glasses; and her student Diana Syrse’s pop-inflected “My Song,” with Syrse declaiming her own text and 13 assorted instrumentalists led with verve by Zhao.

On July 28, Zhao and Weiss led the TMCO in mesmerizing works by Gabriella Smith and Ellen Reid. BSO conductor Thomas Wilkins closed the FCM with two powerful works by Ortiz, her “Altar of the Wind” (with sensational solos by Mexican flutist Alejandro Escuer) and “Hominum: Concerto for Orchestra.” These young musicians sounded completely at home playing this often technically demanding and wildly imaginative music.

TMCO concerts continue through August 18.