LENOX -- In less than two weeks the BSO will be decamping to Europe for its first tour under music director James Levine. Two of its three tour programs have been culled from the recent season at Symphony Hall but one is newly minted, and that new program was given a preview performance on Friday night, allowing local audiences to hear what the orchestra will be bringing to Lucerne and Berlin without leaving the Berkshires. It was the opening blast of a typically bustling weekend at Tanglewood.
A taste of Europe without leaving the Berkshires
On paper, the new program is among the most intriguing that Levine has drawn up yet -- a constellation of pieces seemingly tailored to the conductor's particular tastes but also designed to showcase the orchestra's history. More to the point, the program glides suggestively on the many 20th-century currents, both musical and geopolitical, that linked Europe and America. First up is Charles Ives's iconic "Three Places in New England," in which the composer's rugged proto-modernism combines with his evocative sense of place and his unabashed love of American popular music. That work is powerfully contrasted with another orchestral triptych, Elliott Carter's "Three Illusions," a bracing piece by this country's most respected living composer, written for the BSO and premiered (in its entirety) in 2005.
On the heels of Carter's complex and elusive score comes Ravel's enjoyably splashy Piano Concerto in G, with its implicit nods to Gershwin. And finally, the program ends with Bartok's searing Concerto for Orchestra, a canonical work by a European composer who fled Nazi Europe to spend his final years in America. It was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and premiered by the BSO in 1944.
Friday night's performance was not without its challenges both musical and meteorological, as cold temperatures forced some listeners even in the music shed to huddle beneath blankets, and they were the lucky ones. Musically speaking, the orchestra has some work to do on the Ives in particular, as the score's broader architecture and structural depths remained hazier than usual, even for a piece that deliberately courts musical chaos. The ensemble sounded vigorous and full in the Carter and the Bartok. Pierre-Laurent Aimard was the soloist in the Ravel, and will be joining the orchestra on tour. It was a pleasure to hear this intellectually rigorous musician immerse himself in Ravel's sensual colors and generous streams of melody. Aimard's musical rapport with Levine and the orchestra was also very tight.
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