Celebrating the exceptional and enduring legacy of Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood – Seen and Heard Worldwide

United States Tanglewood Pageant 2024 [6]: Soloists, Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons (conductor). Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox. (RP)

‘However for Koussevitzky, we wouldn’t be right here at the moment’. These phrases had been heard repeatedly at Tanglewood over the course of a three-day celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the exceptional man’s delivery and the hundredth anniversary of his changing into music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The Russian-born virtuoso double bassist, composer and conductor was the BSO’s music director for 25 years from 1924 to 1949. Established in 1937, Tanglewood serves not solely because the summer season residence of the BSO, but additionally as an ‘academy for residing and dealing in music’. It could be Koussevitzky’s most tangible legacy, however not his just one.

Koussevitzky was instrumental in championing new works from the start of his profession, first in Moscow after which in Paris. As soon as in Boston, nevertheless, his efforts grew to become central to the BSO’s mission and, in 1942, he established the Koussevitzky Music Basis. Over 500 new works have been commissioned to this point.

The music carried out over the course of the three-day celebration demonstrated the breadth of Koussevitzky’s musical endeavors. He was celebrated as a composer with a efficiency of his Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra, which he composed and premiered as soloist in Moscow in 1905. Works consultant of these commissioned underneath the BSO’s auspices when he was music director, or by the muse, had been additionally carried out.

Nostalgia, nevertheless, was in brief provide, as the main focus was simply as squarely on the current because the previous. The primary two concert events within the celebration (reviewed right here) opened with works by Steven Mackey and Tania León, each of whom got here as younger artists to review at Tanglewood. They returned this yr to co-direct the Tanglewood’s Pageant of Up to date Music.

Steven Mackey’s City Ocean, commissioned by the Aquarium of the Pacific, opened the primary live performance. Moderately than focus solely on the sounds of the ocean which have impressed so many composers, Mackey selected to seize all the sound spectrum, each pure and human made, skilled within the Southern California coastal ecosystem.

Nelsons and the BSO introduced these fantastic sonorities to life. The sounds from evening Golf equipment within the distance could have intruded into the calls of cavorting dolphins and waves crashing onto shore, however nature gained out. The effervescent of waves as they gently subsided on the sand made you are feeling the sand between your toes.

As evidenced in his Concerto for Double Bass, Koussevitzky’s private musical language is as eclectic as it’s romantic. Passages harking back to Saint-Saëns, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff coursed by means of the piece. The solo double bass half is replete with melody and virtuoso passages, which the BSO’s longtime principal double bassist performed with a lean singing tone and untold grace, but with no hint of sentimentality, on Koussevitzky’s personal instrument.

Sibelius wrote The Origin of Fireplace in 1902 for the opening of the Finnish Nationwide Theater in Helsinki, and Koussevitzky led the primary performances by the BSO in 1937. For The Origin of Fireplace, Sibelius set a textual content from the Kalevala, the Finnish creation epic, which depicts in music the second when the god Ukko kindles fireplace for the primary time.

This efficiency captured all the thrill of Sibelius’s dramatic, colourful musical realization of the scene. The temper was set by the low woodwinds evoking darkness and despair, which had been reworked into hope as baritone Will Liverman informed of Ukko’s makes an attempt to kindle a flame. With the entry of the superb males of the Tanglewood Pageant Refrain, the piece took flight with musical sparks as vibrant as the primary flame taking pictures throughout the evening sky of which they sang.

The ultimate work on this system was Prometheus, Scriabin’s setting of the Greek fable on the origin of fireside. Koussevitzky performed the world premiere in Moscow in 1911 and the BSO premiere in 1925. This efficiency, as with the sooner ones, lacked the lighting results which Scriabin meant to accompany the music. It did, nevertheless, include a kaleidoscope of textures, feelings and musical colours.

Pianist Yefim Bronfman was the soloist on this complicated work. With little alternative for him to show virtuosity, Bronfman was an integral a part of the eclectic musical texture. Nelsons launched the drama within the story as successfully as he had in Sibelius’s setting of the Nordic model of the parable. With the entry of all the Tanglewood Pageant Refrain, the efficiency acquired further tonal luster and immediacy.

The next night’s live performance opened with Tania León’s Stride for orchestra, which she composed for the New York Philharmonic in 1919 to rejoice the centenary of the passing of the Nineteenth Modification guaranteeing girls the best to vote. León evoked musical references to American music, most notably jazz, however the lasting impression of the work is the fantastic, blatant, out-of-tune trumPet fanfares which started and ended the work.

In 1941, as soon as the USA and USSR had grow to be allies in World Battle II, Koussevitzky championed works by Soviet composers in a present of unity and help for the 2 nations and their musicians. Arthur Fiedler, nevertheless, beat Koussevitzky to the punch by introducing Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto in D-flat to Boston audiences with the Boston Pops in 1942. Koussevitzky led the primary of his many BSO performances of the concerto within the following yr and recorded it commercially.

Khachaturian was born right into a working-class Armenian household in Tbilisi in 1936. Effectively versed within the folks music of the area, Khachaturian was adept at combining these traditions with Western classical music sensibilities to create a nationalistic model that typically discovered favor with Soviet censors and authorities. He composed his Piano Concerto in D-flat in 1937, and it proved to be fashionable from the beginning.

A part of the concerto’s enchantment is undoubtedly Khachaturian’s use of folks tunes, in addition to the unique sound of the flexatone within the second motion. A musical noticed was used on this efficiency, and Robert Froehner’s enjoying of the instrument was as fascinating to observe because it was to listen to. Equally compelling was the enjoying of bass clarinetist Andrew Sandwick within the solo passages within the first motion.

The concerto is commonly described as being daring, brash and bombastic, and that it’s. Nonetheless, Nelsons instilled lyricism within the rating at each alternative. One marveled on the technical prowess and energy which Jean-Yves Thibaudet delivered to the relentless rhythmic propulsion and depth of the solo piano half on this exhilarating, nearly exhausting efficiency.

The live performance concluded with Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony. The primary BSO efficiency was in 1894, the yr after the composer’s loss of life. Koussevitzky led the primary Tanglewood efficiency in 1938. For the numerous sitting on the garden, this piece was undoubtedly the draw.

Nelsons crafted a efficiency that was emotionally compelling and musically thrilling. The third motion led to triumph. Who may begrudge the applause which erupted after the ultimate notes had sounded? However Nelsons coMMAnded and obtained whole stillness as the ultimate, ever-so-soft, notes of the fourth motion vanished into the evening air.

Rick Perdian

26.7.2024 – Numerous: Yefim Bronfman (piano), Edwin Barker (double bass), Will Liverman (baritone), Tanglewood Pageant Refrain / James Burton (conductor).

Steven Mackey – City Ocean
Koussevitzky – Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra, Op.3
Sibelius – The Origin of Fireplace for baritone, male refrain and orchestra, Op.32
Scriabin – Prometheus: The Poem of Fireplace, Op.60

27.7.2024 – Numerous: Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano).

Tania León – Stride
Khachaturian – Piano Concerto in D-flat, Op.38
Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 ‘Pathétique’