Lenox, Massachusetts — Michael Tilson Copland’s Symphony No. 3 Here on Saturday night, near Tanglewood, applause broke out behind Shedd.
And why? Copeland’s score is one of his most associated with the Boston Symphony, and he wrote some of it for this very reason.It was music, Thomas was suggested“for the world to come to accept the sound of America”.
The applause continued, and it sounded like one worshiper had left a persistent applause. Thomas turned around, smiled, and joked.
He always agrees, and this great American maverick will stick to his will. The 77-year-old conductor underwent surgery last year to treat glioblastoma, a deadly and progressive brain tumor, and announced in March that he was permanently reducing his activity. , I’m going to stay there,” he said. Said Then; despite the odds, he has.
Thomas, therefore, could have been allowed some introspection, if not more, leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra in concert on Saturday and Sunday, leading Copeland on the one hand and Ives on the other. After all, it was the Boston Symphony Orchestra that he paved the way for all of his power and ideas as music director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra that would define his career from 1995 to 2020. and Tanglewood was part of it. his life began.
Thomas distinguished himself as a Tanglewood Fellow, first arriving here in 1968 and a year later winning the Koussevitzky Prize for Distinguished Student Conductor. He was successively named Assistant, Associate and Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the latter sharing the title with Colin Davis. And he gained attention with programs that put the new in the context of the old, until his departure in 1974.glorious piston second And the exciting “Rite of Spring”. Four instrumentalists playing with Thomas at the time, bassists Lawrence Wolff and Joseph Hahn, violinist Ikuko Mizuno and violinist Michael Zaretsky, also played with him last weekend.
However, in a recent interview with The New York Times, Thomas said he felt “settled and given up” on his situation, and although the Tanglewood estate seemed to take on a special sheen to him, these There was little sense of goodbye to the performance. Even though there was an audience standing to welcome him before he made his notes, there was little sense that there was some kind of grand alumni message.
It was just Michael Tilson-Thomas doing the Michael Tilson-Thomas thing.
And what. Unsurprisingly, Thomas isn’t as excited on the podium right now, but he hasn’t lost motivation. As with , his interest in carefully sculpting details is still there. spent.
Since exploring the avant-garde as conductor of the Monday Evening Concerts in the 1960s, Thomas has seen the concert hall as a place of inquiry and thought, connection and contrast. I have more to say to him.
Saturday’s concert could have been political if Thomas wanted to, but he said nothing outright. Rimsky-Korsakov’s light but banal tribute to the Russian revolutionaries of 1905 based on the Worker’s Song, Dubinushka, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto. I got involved in the conversation. No. 3 written by the composer specifically for American audiences, prior to his 1909 tour.
Alexander Malofif20, was a soloist, which delayed compensation for his collaboration with Thomas canceled by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in March. Declared It would be “inappropriate” for a Moscow-born pianist to play. Malofeev, who was quite innocent to begin with, denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a few days ago, calling it a “horrifying and bloody decision” after another concert in Canada was canceled long ago. Thomas, who had been a devoted supporter of up-and-coming musicians in the founding of the New World Symphony Orchestra and other works, was clearly delighted that they could play together here during the applause.
You can see why: Malofeev is already a special pianist. Many young artists used Rachmaninov to showcase their glittering technical skills, and Malofeeff had them in abundance. But he was interested in more than that. The first movement was broad, dreamy, nightmarish, his left hand confusing the lines. The cadenza was unsettlingly introspective. If the second movement is balm, the third triumph, and its finale is dangerously schmaltz-soaked, well, it’s Rachmaninoff to you. To his credit, Thomas went where Malofeef took him, and brought an orchestra with him.
Sunday’s concert provided an opportunity for Thomas to make a more interpretive statement in the season-ending performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Tanglewood tradition. In a way, he stuck to the Beethoven way. Recentmore stable and heavier than the new standard.
With the Tanglewood Festival chorus at hand, and a vocal quartet of Jacqueline Stacker, Kelly O’Connor, Ben Bliss and Dashon Burton, this is stoic Beethoven, calm, confident, controlled and slow. lyrical in its movements, but gentle rather than frenzied—in other words, Beethoven here, not in the future. Aside from the hard-hitting timpani, it was solidly old school. Forward-looking woodwinds and determined line strength—the finale’s fugue is downright stubborn—reminiscent of Otto Klemperer.
Charles Ives “90 Psalms” An otherworldly but cosmically dissonant prayer for soprano, tenor, chorus, and organ was presented before Beethoven in a characteristic ear-dislocating bit of Thomas’ programming, but he turned over to choirmaster James Burton. Ives worked on the song for years, eventually coming to consider it a farewell to songwriting. The ending is deeply comforting.
“So teach us to count our days,” the text reads in part.
Maybe there was a message after all.