MUSIC REVIEW: TMC Orchestra plays Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet at Ozawa Hall

TANGLEWOOD
OZAWA HALL
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA
JULY 25, 2010

Reviewed by Clarence Fanto

(LENOX, Mass., July 26, 2010) — Move over, Gustavo Dudamel. The Tanglewood Music Center has its own prodigy conductor, Alexander Prior, and he's 17.

During Sunday evening's TMC Orchestra concert at Ozawa Hall, Prior confirmed the strong impression he made on listeners earlier this summer. Like Dudamel, 29, who emerged a decade ago from El Sistema in Venezuela (the training organization for young musicians) en route to his current high-profile position as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Prior, who has composed 40 works since he was 8, is on the express track for a potentially meteoric rise.

A graduate of the St. Petersburg State Conservatory in Russia, where he began his studies when he was 13, the London-born Prior, of British and Russian parentage, is already an assistant conductor at the Seattle Symphony, has led the Royal Philharmonic in London and has conducted a half dozen operas in Russia.

Tackling Tchaikovsky's trusty old warhorse, the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, Prior turned it into a bucking bronco, drawing out all the febrile intensity in the score, and then some. Unlike many conductors, he avoided the trap of sentimentalizing the love music and, near the end, he drew an amazing organ-like sonority out of the winds during the entombment and death scene. The TMC players responded to Prior's leadership with a level of performance — strings, winds, brass, winds and percussion equally impressive — that would do any top-ranked orchestra proud.

Herbert Blomstedt, who coached Prior and the two other young conductors for Sunday night's program, followed up with an equally incandescent performance of Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber. Having fled Nazi Germany after Hitler's regime branded his music as "degenerate," Hindemith composed the tribute to the short-lived German composer in 1943 while teaching at Yale (he had taught briefly at Tanglewood in the summer of 1941).

This colorful work, considered neo-classical, features a scherzo based on Weber's incidental music for Turandot that offers the percussion section an opportunity to strut its stuff in a highly syncopated, off-the-beat solo sequence. There's great bravura writing for brass and winds as well, and the orchestra responded to the 83-year-old Blomstedt's vigorous leadership with a blazing performance that emphasized the score's bold playfulness.

The first half of the TMC program showcased the two other conducting Fellows — Keitaro Harada led a vibrant account of Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, followed by incidental music from the composer's A Midsummer Night's Dream conducted by Cristian Macelaru. As they gain more experience, both are likely to learn the art of subtlety and grace; their performances were technically competent but slighted the delicacy of Mendelssohn's scoring.

As Tanglewood devotees know full well, the TMC Orchestra performances are often among the most memorable of the summer season. The second half of Sunday night's concert easily vaulted into that rarified territory.

Clarence Fanto reviews music for Berkshireliving.com and is a contributing editor of Berkshire Living.