Boryeko kept his seat on this bucking bronco of a performance. He also managed well Saturday night on the Brahms Double Concerto, which is a tricky business; his soloists were violinist Christian Tetzlaff, playing from memory and helpfully turning the pages for cellist Claudio Bohorquez.
The two were spirited, eloquent, and well paired. The piece is a marvel of craftsmanship, ingenuity, and expression, but too often it seems a snooze; the interplay of Tetzlaff and Bohorquez made it enthralling.
Boryeko, now in his 40s, is music director of the Winnipeg Symphony. He was recently in the news when he took over the Munich Philharmonic tour concerts after James Levine canceled; Boryeko took over the Tanglewood concerts when Emmanuel Krivine bowed out.
Trim and bearded, Boryeko is not a flamboyant figure. His movements are precise, suggestive, and on a relatively small scale; he seems interested in refinement of detail.
That was not invariably what he got from the BSO.
He is not the first conductor to find a Waterloo in Schumann's Fourth Symphony, which simply didn't hold together or add up on Friday night. Saturday's all-Brahms program opened with a disheveled account of the Haydn Variations, but when the strings and woodwinds came to the fore in the Second Symphony all was well, and Richard Sebring intoned the horn solos nobly. But the other BSO brass players were far from being at their best, possibly because the night was so chilly.
On Sunday afternoon the BSO took a break, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra played the annual Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert, led by a conductor whom Bernstein encouraged, James DePreist.
DePreist's talents are incontestable; his career never became what he deserved because of racism and his health. Today, after a kidney transplant, the conductor has a new lease on life.
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