Apart from Kronberg. I had never attended a major music festival. And even so, Kronberg is not really a mainstream festival, as it caters basically to the cello crowd. So the invitation to a weekend at the legendary Aston Magna, with a concert at Tanglewood on Saturday evening, got all my strings vibrating.
The Taconic State Parkway (reminding me of the famous question: why is it that Americans drive on a parkway and park on a driveway…?) took us almost to the great house’s doorstep. We did have a taste of Rockwell country on our way from the Taconic to the hill on which Aston Magna sits and majestically dominates the Berkshires scenery. To get to the house, we made our way between two stone pillars and proceeded on a winding unpaved road cutting through beautiful vegetation. When the house appeared, I thought we had arrived at Karen Blixen’s Kenyan estate. But the lovely and gracious couple who greeted us when we arrived were not Blixen and Finch Hatton. Out of Africa was also the atmosphere inside the house, with all the big game hunting memorabilia (including slightly menacing rifles!), the wonderful photographs of Ernest Hemingway and other famous people, as well as those of mountain climbing and horseback riding and other great outdoors sports.
Outside, the view and the grounds, lovingly tended to by their owner, were simply breathtaking, there is no escaping the commonplace expression. The soft outline of the Berkshire hills unfolds endlessly, with, at this time of the year, every shade of green in the lush and abundant vegetation which surrounds you. The grounds of Aston Magna proper are an extraordinary botanical garden with more species than I have ever seen before and the names of which, unfortunately, I cannot begin to remember.
But I will not forget the wonderful reception we got, the delicious meals, the gracious company, the beautiful horses I hope to ride soon and…
The concert at Tanglewood – Saturday, July 21st 2012 The Boston Symphony Orchestra Asher Fisch, Conductor All Wagner Program: Overture to Rienzi Siegfried Idyll Prelude and Love-death from Tristan and Isolde Ride of the Valkyries Forest Murmurs from Siegfried Prelude to Act 1 of Parsifal Overture to TannhaüserThe Tanglewood experience was complete with a pre-concert dinner in a British country club atmosphere, after which we walked to our seats in what is called the Shed, an understatement if I’ve ever heard one! It is a huge hangar-like open-ended construction which can shelter some 5.000 people, although it doesn’t look crowded at all. When we got there, there were already a lot of people and more would arrive to completely fill the hall. The crowd was very eclectic, from very elegant (country style, of course) to completely disheveled, from ages 1 to 101, from excited to blasé. You can place me in the elegant, middle-aged and very excited category. I was truly thrilled to be there, in this my very first festival experience, as I said before. I was much less thrilled by the program, all Wagner, but, oh well,. I still had the Boston Symphony to look forward to, and the conductor I didn’t know.
The BSO was already on stage. Wonderful to see an orchestra in summer attire, men in white tuxedos and the women in white or at least white tops. It looked appropriately festive and seasonable. The concert started miraculously on time, considering the size of the audience – so I guess you can add punctual to the above description of the concert-goers.
I had not been so bowled over by an orchestra sound since the Mariinsky at Carnegie Hall in October 2012 (see October 5, 2012 article). The swelling opening bars of the Overture to Rienzi were simply gorgeous, strings superbly controlled and brasses like I hadn’t heard in a very long time. Throughout the concert, the musicians would all prove to be extraordinarily accomplished, delivering exquisite solos, but it was especially the brasses that dazzled me, and among them the trombones and the horns. I must confess that I even liked the Rienzi overture, very beautiful music indeed, as well as that to Tannhaüser. As for Siegfried and Tristan und Isolde, I’d rather not make any comment. To me, the music sounds boring, repetitive, imprecise and unfocused. The impression I always get is that Wagner had no idea where he was headed and just twisted and turned in a disoriented fashion, until he got tired and brought it all to a stop. Oh, I know, many will be totally horrified by these words, thinking how stupid and callous can one get, but there it is, I just dislike inconclusive and meandering music. But back to the Tanglewood evening, I have to say that the rendition was magnificent. How I longed to be hearing those brasses in Brahms or Strauss, and the strings in Beethoven or Schubert. As fabulous an orchestra as the Boston Symphony is, it does not play by itself, and Asher Fisch proved to be an excellent conductor, precise and sensitive and steady, with no unnecessary gestures and an extremely elegant manner. But then, I read he began his career as Barenboim’s assistant at the Staatskapelle Berlin, and that he is mainly an opera conductor, which explains much. Fantastic school, no room for antics in the pit.
If I have the opportunity, I will return to Tanglewood some day. Or go listen to the BSO in its Boston Winter quarters. It is now up there in my book, together with the Mariinsky, the London Symphony, and the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics.