United States Tanglewood Competition 2024 [2] – Dvořák, Coleridge-Taylor and Shostakovich: Tanglewood Music Heart Orchestra / Ross Jamie Collins, Na’zir McFadden, Andris Nelsons (conductors). Koussevitsky Music Shed. Lenox, 8.7.2024. (CSa)

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, underneath 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 Heart 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 Heart 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 have been adopted by Shostakovich’s complicated, emotional curler coaster of a symphony, No.5 in D. In every the gamers have 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 yr’s Tanglewood’s Music Heart Conducting Fellows. He dominated the rostrum within the opening Carnival. The precision and expressiveness of his elaborate course introduced exuberance and intensely brilliant 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 properly have been attributable to the acoustical challenges of the Koussevitsky Shed, and positively 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 dying, 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, virtually filmic theme that follows, the taking part in, underneath the immaculately wielded baton of Na’Zir McFadden burst with youthful effervescence, and vitality.

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, Girl Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, it’s stated 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 only criticism’.  In a recreation 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 delivered to 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 prices appeared abruptly to accumulate 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, virtually ethereal second topic. Then, with the flick of his wrist, Nelsons racked up the stress 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 scorching pleasure characterised the ultimate Allegro non troppo. Right here, the gradual buildup of brass and percussion culminated in a bellicose militaristic coda, a ultimate 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