LENOX — For a brief moment on Saturday, July 10, musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra had that band-in-the-headlights look on their faces. But it quickly turned to broad smiles as they basked in the adoration of 9,000 cheering fans, this after making an uncharacteristic European-style entrance to the stage in Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Music Shed. (Normally, they trickle onto the stage one at a time.) The crowd roared its welcome to the players in no uncertain terms as the orchestra appeared on stage at its summer home for the first in-person concert after the 2020 Tanglewood season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
No sooner had the applause subsided than music director Andris Nelsons arrived on stage, accompanied by Gail Samuel, the BSO’s new president and CEO. Nelsons made a few humbly affectionate remarks directly to the audience, and Samuel briefly introduced herself, giving high praise to outgoing CEO Mark Volpe. And now, a whole new round of ovations ensued, as the love-fest continued. And it was all absolutely heartfelt: Nelsons really missed us; the players really missed us. And, of course, we missed all of the musicians very badly, we who languish so pitifully without live orchestral music.
The Boston Symphony is an internationally respected orchestra with a 140-year history of achieving the very highest level of musical excellence. But to its friends in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, it is a community orchestra. We know the players’ names and faces. They know many of ours.
It was an all-Beethoven program on Saturday, partly in recognition of the composer’s birth year in 2020 and partly as a look back in time to the year 1937, when the orchestra performed Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in its inaugural Tanglewood concert.
Saturday’s program opened with the Overture to “The Creatures of Prometheus,” which, like a pop confection, went by so quickly they should have played it twice. Next, one of the festival’s most beloved and frequent guest artists, Emanuel Ax, dispatched Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” with characteristic aplomb, except for the second movement. There, Ax seemed to outdo himself with playing so exquisitely nuanced that time in the Shed seemed to stand still — a pin-drop moment.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra always plays Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony flawlessly and with great verve. But the musicians achieve a different kind of perfection when Nelsons conducts than when other conductors lead them in the well-known piece. In this performance, there was visible evidence of magic: When Nelsons holds the podium rail with his left hand, bends his knees, and points his baton at the orchestra like a wizard casting a spell, then we know something very special is happening.
According to folk singer Joni Mitchell, “We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.” But in the case of Tanglewood and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, we knew perfectly well what we had, were heartbroken to lose it, and are now deeply grateful for its return. Paradise unpaved.
