Christian Tetzlaff and James Levine at Tanglewood: Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps and Brahms’ Violin Concerto

After Friday's intelligently conceived, but incompletely realized Pathétique Maestro Levine deserved a personal triumph, I thought, and it came, not quite by surprise, in the form of Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps. His performances of this work have been highly regarded for years, most recently in December of last year, when it was performed as a hundredth-birthday tribute to Elliott Carter, whose career was shaped by a performance of the work he heard in his youth. Hence, this afternoon, every detail was thoroughly polished.

Moist and Interior: Bach, Schumann, and Beethoven

Stephen Kovacevich at Tanglewood, Ozawa Hall, Thursday, July 2, 8 p.m. Bach, Partita No. 4, D-Major, S.828; Scuhmann, Kinderscenen Opus 15; Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Opus 120 One thought that the foggy and dewy atmosphere at Ozawa hall on Thursday night was a welcome ambience for London resident Stephen Kovacevich. But, in the [...]

Opening Night at Tanglewood, James Levine, conductor,
 Yefim Bronfman, piano: 
All-Tchaikovsky Program


What could be more appropriate for opening night at Tanglewood than two Tchaikovsky warhorses? His late Romantic idiom and imaginative affinity for broken heterosexual passion, cheapened to Romance by popular reception, makes his music ideal for performance under the stars, whether in the Hollywood Bowl or at Tanglewood. My first music teacher, an Australian disciple of Casals, who may therefore have known her own share of real passion, noting my enthusiasm for Tchaikovsky, tried bravely to instill contempt and loathing for his music through ridicule and constant exposure to Bach. I played the two- and three-part Inventions with enthusiasm; she urged be to seek out Casals' Prades recordings of the Brandenburgs, hard to find back then. She won, to a degree, but I never quite gave up on Tchaikovsky, and now, many years later, I can look back on Tchaikovsky through the substantial lenses of Shostakovich and Prokofiev and see him as a latter-day Russian Bach, at least the father of Russian music, Mikhail Glinka having receded to a shadowy Saturnian role, at least in the West.

Aston Magna presents Baroque Masterpieces, July 10-12: Vivaldi, Tartini, Rameau, and J. S. Bach

Baroque Narratives Vivaldi: La Tempesta Tartini: The Devil's Trill Sonata Rameau: La Rameau, and other musical portraits J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 J.S. Bach: Cappricio on the departure of a beloved brother John Gibbons, harpsichord; Christopher Krueger, baroque flute; Laura Jeppesen, viola da gamba; Daniel Stepner, baroque violin; Jane Starkman, violin, Loretta O'Sullivan, cello • July 10, 8:00 P.M.: Olin Auditorium • [...]

Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain, Barrington Stage Company

Mark St. Germain's Freud's Last Session, which is receiving its permiere at the Barrington Stage Company this month was inspired by Armand Nicholi's valuable little book, The Question of God (2002). Dr. Nicholi, a practising psychiatrist, teaches at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and has also taught an undergraduate course on Freud for many years at Harvard College. Written in very simple, clear prose and taking nothing for granted in the reader, even that the reader knows who Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis were, he compares their thinking on the existence of God and other related matters, in such a way as to suggest a debate, between the two. Lewis, a generation younger than Freud, was influenced by him during the earlier part of his life, when he professed atheistic beliefs. In The Question of God, which I did not know before seeing this production and which is readable by almost anybody, Dr. Nicholi accomplishes an extremely important task with unparalleled success: he demonstrates that it is by no means necessary to believe in God, but that it is necessary to define one's beliefs and to think about them in a rational way.