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Youthful Tanglewood Music Middle Orchestra comes of age in Shostakovich’s Fifth – Seen and Heard Worldwide


Youthful Tanglewood Music Middle Orchestra comes of age in Shostakovich’s Fifth – Seen and Heard WorldwideUnited States Tanglewood Competition 2024 [2] – Dvořák, Coleridge-Taylor and Shostakovich: Tanglewood Music Middle Orchestra / Ross Jamie Collins, Na’zir McFadden, Andris Nelsons (conductors). Koussevitsky Music Shed. Lenox, 8.7.2024. (CSa)

Na’zir McFadden conducts the TMCO © Hilary Scott / BSO

Dvořák – Carnival Overture, Op.92 (conductor: Ross Jamie Collins)
Coleridge-Taylor – Ballade in A minor, Op.33 (conductor Na’zir McFadden)
Shostakovich – Symphony No.5 in D, Op 47 (conductor Andris Nelsons)

Set deep within the wooded Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts, the historic eighteenth-century city of Lenox performs host to the Tanglewood Music Competition.  Each July and August the Boston Symphony Orchestra, below its resident conductor Andris Nelsons, emigrates right here for 2 months of intense music making. Tanglewood additionally serves as a extremely aggressive summer season coaching academy for rising skilled instrumentalists, singers and conductors – Tanglewood Music Middle Fellows – who’re carefully mentored by the Boston gamers and visiting artists. Whereas BSO live shows make up the physique of the season’s programming, its beating coronary heart is the Tanglewood Music Middle Orchestra. Right here these gifted college students carry out on the highest stage.

Two vibrantly joyous works – Dvořák ‘s Carnival Overture and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in A minor – made up the primary half of the TMCO’s opening live performance which after the interval had been adopted by Shostakovich’s complicated, emotional curler coaster of a symphony, No.5 in D. In every the gamers had been led by a unique conductor.

The 22-year-old Finnish British Ross Jamie Collins is a former pupil of Klaus Mälkelä and considered one of this 12 months’s Tanglewood’s Music Middle Conducting Fellows. He dominated the rostrum within the opening Carnival. The precision and expressiveness of his elaborate path introduced exuberance and intensely vibrant orchestral color from these younger musicians. The dancing rhythmic opening pretty bustled with the noisy crowds, avenue distributors and hawkers of Dvořák’s creativeness. Whereas there have been moments of sectional imbalance and quantity management, significantly within the brass, they may effectively have been attributable to the acoustical challenges of the Koussevitsky Shed, and definitely did nothing to dim the pleasures of a Bohemian fiesta in full swing.

Coleridge-Taylor was born in London to a Sierra Leonese father and white English mom. He was composing within the early twentieth century and was typically in comparison with Mahler. He was additionally closely influenced by Dvořák. In 1898, 14 years earlier than his premature loss of life, he composed his Ballade in A minor, which, regardless of the absence of a musical narrative, is in type and substance a tone poem. From the introductory dramatic function of the timpani and blazing brass and woodwind within the opening part to the tender, nearly filmic theme that follows, the enjoying, below the immaculately wielded baton of Na’Zir McFadden burst with youthful effervescence, and vitality.

Andris Nelsons conducts the TMCO © Hilary Scott / BSO

After the interval, the orchestra was joined by maestro Andris Nelsons in a deeply transferring account of the Shostakovich. After the Soviet regime’s denigration of his publicly acclaimed opera, Woman Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, it’s mentioned that Shostakovich was summoned by considered one of Stalin’s emissaries and requested whether or not he accepted the official rebuke. Balancing musical integrity with the necessity to shield himself from cultural banishment or worse, the composer – tongue firmly in cheek – obsequiously inscribed his symphonic response ‘a Soviet artist’s inventive reply to simply criticism’.  In a sport of political cat and mouse, the mouse got here out on high. The ensuing work, heroic and tragic in equal measure, was a masterpiece which cunningly defied the authorities.

Nelsons is a Latvian by delivery who grew up Riga when the nation was within the pale of the USSR. His readings and recordings of Shostakovich symphonies are legendary, and he dropped at this efficiency an innate cultural and historic understanding. An financial but extremely communicative conductor with an unerringly exact beat, Nelsons can change the dynamics and character of a phrase with a minimal gesture of the hand or a raised eyebrow. Below his shut supervision his younger fees appeared abruptly to amass a maturity and finesse which belied their years. Biting strings ripped by means of the opening bars of the Moderato adopted by a sluggish, luxuriant, nearly ethereal second topic. Then, with the flick of his wrist, Nelsons racked up the strain with a terrifying, remorseless march, heralded by braying horns and brash trumpets. The second motion Allegretto was a delightfully clumsy and vibrant peasant ländler with positive contributions from the winds – notably quartets of insistent oboes and clarinets and a trio of pungently woody bassoons, and an beautiful alternate between the primary violin (Katia Tesarczyk) and principal flute (Elizabeth McCormack). This was adopted by a Largo – a poignant lament – wherein pianissimo strings hovered within the air with coronary heart stopping delicacy. Purple sizzling pleasure characterised the ultimate Allegro non troppo. Right here, the gradual buildup of brass and percussion culminated in a bellicose militaristic coda, a remaining musical second wherein the dissident Shostakovich thumbed his nostril on the uncomprehending authorities. In a masterfully nuanced and tightly coordinated efficiency of this nice work, the 2024 TMCO Fellows really got here of age.

Chris Sallon

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