2024 marks three anniversaries for Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra: the one hundred fiftieth of his birth, the centennial of the beginning of his tenure and the seventy-fifth of his final season as music director. This weekend’s programs at Tanglewood, billed as “The Koussevitzky 150 Celebration Weekend”, featured works commissioned by or associated with Koussevitzky along with a recent BSO commission by an American composer. Sunday’s concert presented commissions by James Lee III (2022) and Aaron Copland (1927) in the first half, which demonstrated the ongoing cross pollination between the music Koussevitzky encouraged and that of today. The second half took a fittingly ritualistic turn for the closing concert of the celebration with two other commissions: Randall Thompson’s a capella Alleluia (1940) and Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (1930).
Lee’s Freedom’s Genuine Dawn consciously echoes stylistic aspects of Copland’s Lincoln Portrait serving also as a thematic coda to that piece through the voice of Frederick Douglass and his unflinching 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?” The music colorfully comments on or expands on the words, varying the mood from the playful episode where reference to the signers of the “Declaration of Independence” evokes a small-town band marching on the 4th of July, through the fierce, cutting passage as Douglass rounds on the Declaration’s hypocrisy, to the glimmer of hope which glows and grows into the sunburst precipitated by the final word, “light”. Andris Nelsons and the orchestra gave the Boston premiere of the piece this past October. This afternoon, they played with assurance and intensity. However, narrator Thomas Warfield’s delivery of the text was at times mannered and not completely in synch with the spirit of the music around him, detracting from the overall impact.
Though Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue preceded it by three years, Copland’s Piano Concerto was still considered controversial, its embrace of jazz, blues, and ragtime off-putting to both audience and critics at its premiere. Copland was soloist then and on the recording with Leonard Bernstein nearly thirty years later which rescued the concerto from obscurity. His playing, however, betrays a certain reserve, as if he’s pulling his punches. Paul Lewis, on the other hand, leaned in with gusto, letting the jazz swing and the blues wail. The riot of ragtime syncopation in the second movement was thrilling and the ease with which he navigated the gnarly rhythms of the cadenza a lesson in clarity and precision. He and the orchestra fed off each other in a performance that made one wonder why it took so long for this piece to make its mark.
Koussevitzky approached Randall Thompson for something to inaugurate the Berkshire Music Center (now known as the Tanglewood Music Center). Thompson opted for consecration over celebration. Alleluia was the result. Since then it has been performed by students and staff to open the summer semester and often at Koussevitzky’s Lenox grave on the anniversary of his death. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus conjured a nimbus of sound, filling the shed with the comfort of its warm glow. Applause was cut short as Nelsons immediately launched into the Symphony of Psalms with his characteristic attention to detail and rhythmic control, paying particular attention to the unique textures and colors Stravinsky’s uncommon instrumentation creates. He tapped into the primal energy which builds in intensity through the first two movements culminating in the chorus’s ardent outburst, “He has put in my mouth a new song.” That new song, by turns solemn and celebratory, tapered to a calming whisper, fading into the sublime infinite.
