Review: A chilly night at Tanglewood for Beethoven and Prokofiev

The BSO has a long and commendable tradition of offering chamber music from members of the orchestra at 6 p.m. on Friday evenings, free to anyone who has a ticket to enter the grounds.

I must take this occasion to apologize to the readers of what is meant to be a weekly addition to the arts section of this publication, for my extreme lateness in submitting a review of last weekend’s BSO concerts. I am afraid I have had a very nasty cold, which put me out of commission for nearly a week. I was also unable to cover last Saturday or Sunday’s because I was away.

But, if you have any shred of credibility left for your classical music-reviewer, I give you a report of the prelude and Orchestral BSO concerts of Friday, August 15.

I add the prelude coverage in part to make up for lack of volume, but, more importantly, to bring attention to a long and commendable BSO tradition of offering Chamber Music from members of the orchestra at 6 p.m. on Friday evenings.

The Friday evening prelude offerings, which are free to anyone who has a ticket to enter the grounds, do not always interest me. But, in this case, we were treated to a sumptuous offering whose centerpiece was the piano quintet F minor by Cesar Franck. The performers were mostly first-stand members of the BSO, including its excellent principle second violinist Haldan Martinson, and Sunday afternoon’s soloist for the Rach 3 Nicolai Lugansky.

Our warm up to the Franck was an arrangement by Norwegian composer/violinist Johan Halversen (1864-1935) of the finale to Handel’s Keyboard Suite no.7 in G minor. That this was a favorite showpiece of the great virtuoso Jascha Heifetz gives us a good impression of the nature of the arrangement: It is a lovely blend of late-Baroque Passacaglia form with very extroverted Romantic virtuosity, bordering on ostentatiousness, of which Heifetz was so fond. Because Mr. Martinson, and BSO cellist Mihail Jojata, were so well prepared, it all came off as rather delightful.

A propos of late Romantic extrovert is of course M. Franck, who apparently used to shout “Modulez! Modulez!” to his composition students, whenever he could. Indeed, Franck can at times sound overly surfeited by this sort of thing, especially as he sought to write in the classical genres for instrumental music, which Wagner, for instance, was sure to avoid. The Franck Piano Quintet certainly has this element, but also strikes one as rather tasteful. For Franck succeeds very well here in giving his listener periodic respite from the more thickly torrid passages, so that we actually live all his choked up passion without feeling overwhelmed, and consequently drowning in it. The largely cyclic pattern of the work also helps bring out its sense as a coherent whole.

The main concert on Friday was lead, once again, by Stéphane Denève, who brought with him a program much better suited to his mediocre talents than the previous weekends’ Tchaikovsky extravaganza. In the first half we were treated to what is probably the greatest piano concerto ever written, Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto in E-Flat, Opus 73. The soloist was the usually excellent Emanuel Ax who, unfortunately, seemed to suffer on this occasion from the unusually cold temperatures, at or below 50 degrees.

The opening solo passage was mushy and inexact; and indeed, throughout the performance, Ax had more missed notes than is expected in this stage. Denève, for his part, was unable to get the sort of bold playing one looks for in this work. But, there was a certain delicacy to the sound which is not unappealing in concertos, in which the orchestra plays a supporting role, though rather less the case here.

One also wanted a little more passion from Ax in the development of the first movement Allegro. To be sure, Ax has a grand, harmonious sound, much to be admired; but I should have liked to hear a bit more of the human behind the state-of-the-art Steinway machine.

After the Beethoven concerto, Elena Manistina joined Stephane Deneve and the bSO for Prokofiev's 'Alexander Nevsky.' Photo: Hilary Scott
After the Beethoven concerto, Elena Manistina joined Stephane Deneve and the bSO for Prokofiev’s ‘Alexander Nevsky.’ Photo: Hilary Scott

Of course, one could hardly fail to be struck by the magisterial beauty of the concerto, even though it sounded as if Denève kept a kind of lid on the orchestra throughout. The piece is a perfect example of Beethoven’s unique melding of a classical nobility — not at all at odds with unencumbered depth of feeling – mixed with a certain amount of characteristic fancifulness and whim. Here, as elsewhere in Beethoven, the development concludes with a pathetic sort of searching for the home key, and the material of the exposition, holding the listener on edge, the piano line lingering as if to ask, “Where are we going?” In the end, it finds itself in a flourish of the movement’s opening soloistic material.

Most listeners will probably find the inspiration for Bernstein’s “There’s a Place for Us” from “West Side Story” in how the second movement theme evolves. But there are also shades of the second movement of Beethoven’s violin concerto in the transition out of the opening material. This delicate but profoundly emotive material evolves into what is probably the most touching moment of the entire piece, the piano’s reiteration of the movements opening material and its accompaniment, all deliciously contained within the confines of a single instrument. Here, too, Mr. Ax was at his best.

Beethoven, of course, is bound to tease us some more, and delicately sneaks his way into an exquisite last movement which was, on the whole, the greatest success for Maestro Denève; for he elicited a particularly smooth texture in the strings which nicely balanced the natural percussiveness of the solo piano.

Stephane Deneuve led the BSO and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Prokofiev's 'Alexander Nevsky.' Photo: Hilary Scott
Stephane Deneuve led the BSO and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Prokofiev’s ‘Alexander Nevsky.’ Photo: Hilary Scott

After the intermission we were presented with Sergei Prokofiev’s reformulation of his score to the 1938 film “Alexander Nevsky”about a Russian Prince’s glorious victory over Swedish and then German invaders in the 1240s. The version presented here is for mixed chorus and mezzo soprano (here Elena Manistina).

In Prokofiev one doesn’t expect the quality of a Beethoven, of course, but the music here, especially as film music, is very agreeable. If only the text were more so. Instead, we are irked by the constant refrain of, “whoever invades Russia will be killed” which feels a bit more distasteful, perhaps, in light of current events. For my part, I chose to largely ignore the programmatic elements of the work, and simply to enjoy a lot of good old Russian pomp, and so keep myself warm on a rather frigid summer night.