The Margaret Lee Crofts Concert, Monday, July 29, 2024 The Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra conducted by Ross Jamie Collins, Na’Zir McFadden, and Stefan Asbury Ellen Taafe Zwilich, “Celebration” (1984), conducted by Ross Jamie Collins Steven Mackey, “Stumbling Toward Grace,” Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2011), conducted by Stefan Asbury, with piano soloist Orli Shaham T. J. Anderson, “Squares, an Essay for Orchestra” (1965), conducted by Na’Zir McFadden Tania Léon, “Ser” (2017), conducted by Ross Jamie Collins, and “Pasajes” (2022), for Orchestra, conducted by Stefan Asbusy Usually, the composers whose works are chosen for inclusion in programs of the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music represent a range of generations from the earlier 20th century to the present.
Last summer’s festival had four co-curators ranging in age from 39 to 52, that is, members of Gen X or younger. Their program choices reflected some of the many current musical trends, particularly multi-culturalism. This year’s co-curators Tanya Léon and Steven Mackey were of an earlier generation, born in 1943 and 1956, respectively.
And this final program of the festival included music by two even older living composers, aged 85 and 96: Ellen Taafe Zwilich (born in 1939) and T. J. Anderson (born in 1928).
Their chosen compositions dated from 1984 and 1965. Léon’s and Mackey’s works on the program were more recent, originating in the last 15 years. Unlike other festival programs, this one included no premieres or new commissions, and many of the works have already been recorded.
While each composer and composition spoke with a distinctive voice, there was no obvious way to tell which were the older or newer compositions. This may indicate that the present is catching up to the past, which is another way of saying that today there exists a wide range of musical styles that can fall under the term “contemporary.” For me, the most striking and “modernist” work on the program was T.
J. Anderson’s 58-year-old “Squares, an Essay for Orchestra” from 1965 that was included in the ground-breaking “Black Composers” series recorded in 1975. Its style looks back to the atonality of German expressionists like Webern, the minimalism of Morton Feldman, and jazz, along with a sense of color, harmony, rhetoric, and structure all its own.
The fragmentary, kaleidoscopic surface (made up of short “sound platforms” or “squares”) was stitched together into a multi-voiced conversation that alternated between aggressive outbursts with brass and snare drums and mysterious clouds of string sonority. In between were contrasting short “statements” by solo winds and short melodic passages in the strings. Brusque punctuation at the beginning and end seemed to indicate that the discussants had failed to arrive at mutual understanding, a foreseeable outcome when one party insists on the use of force.
Considering the date of its composition and of this performance, it was hard to avoid reading a social message into the work, but apart from that, it had a mysteriously seductive beauty, well shaped by conductor Na’Zir McFadden, who provided each detail with its own distinctive character. Ellen Taafe Zwilich’s “Celebration” lives up to its title, with a ritornello of echoing trumpet fanfares framing colorful episodes building on the fanfare motif, a rising iambic fourth. It also features colorful passages for solo violin, cellos, winds, bells, bass, and horn, as well as a soaring melody on unison high strings.
While it maintains a positive character, there is a range of thoughtful, nuanced responses across the orchestra, including intimate and searching passages, before energy builds toward a grand, but not grandiose, conclusion. The fanfare figure bears a (possibly coincidental) resemblance to Benjamin Britten’s elegiac setting of Wilfred Owens’ poem “Bugles Sang” from his War Requiem. What Britten’s and Zwilich’s works also have in common is skillful use of scoring to suggest a vast open space.
Steven Mackey has been a favorite at Tanglewood for years, so his role as curator was well earned, as was a place on this program for his large-scale, rambunctious piano concerto of 2011 entitled “Stumbling Toward Grace,” which doubled as a tone-poem charting the growth of his young son from infancy through the post-toddler stage. This was primarily portrayed in the quirky piano part which, while technically very challenging, eschewed the usual virtuoso fireworks that composers normally can’t resist. The pianist, Orli Shaham, clearly owns the part, which was written for her, and she plunged into it with child-like enthusiasm, physical stamina, and impressive technique.
The five continuously performed movements, moving through four “stages” (presumably of child development) lasting about 25 minutes, could occasionally feel over written, with very loud, chaotic-sounding passages for hyper-active piano plus brass (“too many notes”?). These were a reminder that Mackey was and remains an electric guitarist and rock ’n’ roller, which often, but not always, influences his more “classical” compositions. (His violin concerto “Beautiful Passing,” performed at the Tanglewood festival 10 years ago, made original and moving use of a repurposed romantic musical language.
) The piano concerto used some novel scoring techniques, including a mis-tuned harp that made the piano itself feel out of tune (an illusion), as well as some tin-can percussion evocative of children getting into the kitchen for some fun noise-making. Mackey’s rock background also showed in his energetic layering of contradictory rhythms with varied interactions (i.e.
, within the sections of the orchestra, between orchestra and piano, etc.). The performance, under Stefan Asbury’s authoritative direction, was presumably definitive, drawing on the amazing ability of this orchestra to master such a long and complex score within a one-week rehearsal schedule.
The other curator-composer of this year’s festival, Tania Léon, is also familiar to Tanglewood audiences. Her orchestral works are enriched by influences from her Latin American background (specifically Cuban) and what sounds to me like a French approach to harmony and orchestral color. The first of her two works, “Ser” (“Being”), made effective use of woodwind solos building toward a central trumpet statement and subsiding to a flutter-tongued flute and quiet string chorale.
Lively touches of percussion contributed to the musical flow, which included some very lovely quiet moments, kept under effective control by conductor Ross Jamie Collins, who had elsewhere shown a tendency to encourage energetic (read “loud”) playing, especially in the brasses. Here, it was a relief to see and hear hushed playing required by the atmosphere of mystery and magic central to the personality of this work. Its companion piece, “Pasajes,” led by Maestro Asbury, had a different orchestral character grounded in the strings.
At the start, a high fifth hovering in the violins reminded me of the Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin but with Wagner’s supercharged emotional atmosphere replaced by an element of mystery that left more to the listeners’ imaginations. Another point of reference might be the string chorale of Ives’s “Unanswered Question,” which (according to that composer) represents “the eternal mysteries.” Léon’s work paralleled both of these spiritual relatives in a way, using a whole-tone piano flourish to magically initiate several passages, like the stages of a ritual.
Connection to nature seemed indicated by woodwind flourishes, especially a bird-call piccolo solo near the beginning. That the music is also down to earth was suggested by an unusual virtuosic kettle-drum solo at the center of the piece. As in “Ser,” a string chorale plays an important role in bringing these disparate elements together.
Both of Léon’s works provided color, mystery, unique detail, and secure molding of beautiful sonority into cohesive and satisfying musical experiences..
