In this concert, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, comprised of Instrumental Fellows, performed works by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Béla Bartók. Conducting Fellows Lauren Smith and Julian Gilewski led early twentieth-century works by the two French composers, and Esa-Pekka Salonen took the podium after intermission for a thrilling performance of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Each summer, just over one-hundred-and-twenty young musicians are selected to participate as TMC Fellows in an intensive program of advanced study, instructed and mentored by a distinguished faculty of visiting artists and composers and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. TMC Fellows often go on to careers as orchestra musicians, and many members of U.S. orchestras are TMC alumni. Although most play orchestral instruments, the ranks of TMC Fellows also include singers, pianists, composers and librarians, as well as the two Conducting Fellows featured tonight (and who also had been tutored by Salonen in an “Art of Conducting” workshop just three days earlier). This concert was the TMC Orchestra’s second opportunity to perform under Salonen’s baton. The first, a week ago, capped off a week-long Festival of Contemporary Music, performed by TMC Fellows and guest soloists, that was curated by Salonen and included three of his own compositions.
Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin was beautifully led by Lauren Smith, who has conducted Les Violins du Roy and the AXIOM ensemble at the Juilliard School, where she studies conducting with David Robertson. Smith showed fine technique, keeping the orchestra in excellent balance and deftly preparing the players for their respective entrances. In the Prélude she shaped phrases with sweeping gestures, carefully building a crescendo before the low strings and harp brought the movement to a quiet ending. She took the concluding Rigaudon at a brisk tempo, contrasted nicely with William Fengyang Ju’s excellent oboe solo in the central section. The playing of the Fellows was outstanding, with fine contributions by principals Kyungmin Gammi Eom on flute, Nickolas Hamblin on clarinet, Jeremy Bryant on trumpet and Renée Murphy on harp.
Next, Julian Gilewski led an exciting traversal of Debussy’s La Mer. Based in his native Warsaw, Poland, Gilewski has conducted many orchestras throughout that country and has served as resident conductor of the Lublin Philharmonic and currently as an assistant conductor at the Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera in Warsaw. On the podium he used his towering height and long arms and fingers to advantage in shaping phrases and evoking the sparkling effects that Debussy uses to represent the ever-changing sea.
The opening movement, ‘De l’aube à midi sur la mer’ (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea) featured an outstanding solo by violinist Anthony Wing Pong Poon accompanied by rapid figurations on Jeehoon Kim’s oboe and Claire Kim’s flute. Then in ‘Jeux de vagues’ (Play of the Waves) Gilewski’s broad left-hand gestures evoked surging declarations from the strings that contrasted with chattering woodwinds. In ‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’ (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea), following Liam McManus’s Introductory timpani roll over the rumbling of the low strings and Barton Sopata’s solo on muted trumpet, Gilewski’s vigorous baton strokes prompted explosive outbursts making way for the movement’s principal thematic motif. The remainder of the movement was highlighted by solos from Jesdelson Vasquez’s cornet à piston and Murphy’s harp, and by persistently oscillating figurations from a trio of trumpets, all leading up to an exciting acceleration to the finish.
Following intermission, Salonen led the Fellows in Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, which had been commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky in 1943 and premiered by the BSO the following year. Professor Hugh Macdonald describes the work as “designed for a large virtuoso orchestra of the highest class, . . . and the instruments are often mercilessly exposed. It also requires ensemble playing of great precision and a sense of color and vitality . . .” Programming such a piece for an orchestra comprised of young musicians from around the world thrown together just weeks ago and with only a few hours of rehearsal time posed a daunting challenge, yet Salonen and the Fellows carried it off brilliantly.
The brass played resplendently, notably in fugal passages in the opening movement and at the work’s conclusion. The woodwinds proved well up to Bartók’s harmonic complexities as they paired off in the second movement’s ‘Game of Pairs’. Strings, harps, woodwinds and timpani collaborated beautifully in the dark ‘Elegy’, and muted violins ended the ‘Interrupted Intermezzo’ with a lovely rendition of a melody reflecting the composer’s nostalgia for his then Nazi-occupied Hungary. The entire orchestra was sensational in the Finale, rushing energetically to a powerful conclusion.
This performance was a high note on which to cap off Salonen’s eventful two-week stay at Tanglewood, during which, in addition to his many interactions with the TMC Fellows, he conducted the BSO in a superb concert that included the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, and a magnificent performance by Yefim Bronfman of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto.
