Tanglewood on Parade
Fireworks In and Out of the Shed
By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 29, 2009
For one of the most popular events of the Berkshire Season, last's night's sold out musical marathon "Tanglewood on Parade" also drew a capacity audience of picnickers on the soggy lawn. It had rained cats and dogs the evening before as the faithful devoured a fabulous performance of "Don Giovanni." What a difference a day makes, particularly during the Monsoon of 2009.
Remarkably, that full house turned out on a weeknight. It silenced some skeptics that indeed there are tourists and vacationers out and about in the Berkshires despite a sour economy and lousy weather. In going forward with a strong schedule of concerts the BSO/ Tanglewood has demonstrated that audiences will respond to popular programming.
On this occasion, yet again, the "Parade" hit a home run with the fans followed by a spectacular display of fireworks following an epic performance of the beloved "1812 Overture." So what if the Fourth of July is now a memory. Any night is a great occasion for fireworks; perhaps a paean to the gods for a rare dry night. With a blast of heat. It was muggy in the Shed. The first such complaint all summer.
The familiar format of the annual "Parade" is a march to the podium of a full house of conductors. First up was James Levine in the rare guise of offering the lighter, more programmatic end of the repertoire. After so many concerts in which we have seen his take on the most daunting scores from Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," to the massive choral work the Brahms "Requiem," or Mozart's "Don Giovanni" on Monday, it was enjoyable to find the maestro in a playful mode. While romping through Rossini's "Overture to William Tell" with its familiar, sanguine, brass passages he spun in his chair and mugged to the audience. A rare Levine moment indeed. "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when out of the past come the thundering hoof beats of the great horse SilverÂ… The Lone Ranger." I am of the generation that thrilled to the adventures of the Lone Ranger and Tonto on radio. Levine followed with sprightly gypsy melodies on the light hearted and merry "Romanian Rhapsody No. 1" by Enescu.
The stage was reset to bring on Leonard Slatkin for an arrangement of Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story." Yet again we came to appreciate the brilliance and richness of that score. Working with the very young musicians of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra Slatkin put the kids through their paces. Many of them really seemed to swing with the music. Especially in the percussion section with one youngster cutting loose on a jazz drum kit and another grooving on timbales for the proper Latino inflections. It was simply delightful.
After an intermission the wheels fell off the fast track program. Where the John Williams "Film Night" tribute to Warner Brothers had thrilled the audience the response to his "Tribute to Seiji" (1995) was respectful but tepid. This attempt at a symphonic work is rather muddled. It seems a pastiche of aspects of modernism mixed with tradition. There were the sharp percussive passages contrasted with lyric ones but overall the score lacked cohesion and duende.
That was followed by Pops conductor Keith Lockhart performing a rather tedious bit of ersatz Americana. A jingoistic "Lincoln Portrait" by Aaron Copland with flourishes of folk music and passages of familiar songs. For the occasion the designated celebrity reader of a cloying text was Governor Deval Patrick. On paper it looked like a winning combination of an African American Governor and Berkshire neighbor in a piece devoted to the Great Emancipator. But Patrick has an odd, high pitched voice which can be comic and certainly lacked the gravitas called for. The reading made no connection with the depth of the text. But the audience awarded the performance with a standing O. Oh well.
If the evening faltered during the second half it got back on track for a truly epic and spectacular climax. Two orchestras were combined on stage the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. There were so many strings that it seemed that the cello section might end up in the wings. There were more musicians on stage since well the last time. Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos was more than up to the occasion. It was just magnificent as he created a massive performance of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture." It had all of the requisite bing, bang, boom. The audience filed out of the Shed greeted by a thundering blaze of pyrotechnics. It was crash and bang as we made our way to the parking lot. Smiles of a Summer Night.