On a crisp, clear Friday in the Berkshires, the place to be last night was Tanglewood where, after a picnic dinner out back of Highwood, my friend Kit and I took our seats in the Shed for the annual Koussevitsky Memorial Concert by the Boston Symphony. Performing with them was the Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire, who wowed me last year when I saw him play Beethoven's 4th concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. Here, he once again displayed his quiet mastery at the keyboard, starting with an understated performance of Mozart's 20th concerto in D minor, keeping his cadenzas and his gestures clipped and articulate. (Freire plays Mozart's 20th again next week as part of the opening concert for the Mostly Mozart Festival.) 

Freire followed with a performance of his fellow Brazilian Villa-Lobos' "Momoprecoce," a fantasy for piano and orchestra that was new to almost everyone in the Shed, including the BSO. Led by BSO assistant conductor Marcelo Lehninger (also a Brazilian, making his Tanglewood debut), the three conjoined movements were at turnes exotic and dancey, propelled by trumpets, flute, and a huge percussion section including everything from maracas to bass drums.

The concert ended with Mussorgsky/Ravel's Pictures at an Exhibition: a symphonic staple, both here and elsewhere. Lehninger, who's 31, wasn't perfect, showing a fair bit of awkwardness during some of the slower Pictures. But, he more than made up for it with the bigger, showier movements, shaking his sweat-matted hair and snapping his baton around like that other South American conductor. After the grand, deafening roar of The Great Gate of Kiev, the audience exploded in cheers, with everyone rising to their feet to applaud the young conductor. 

After all, even if Lehninger's hands weren't always in the right place, his heart certainly was. Stay tuned: this guy might just end up becoming Jimmy's replacement.

More pics below and on the photo page.

by Angela Sutton

Photo: Cong Yan / China Daily

The Lincoln Center Festival provided a respite from a steamy, stormy, July Thursday with a trip to ancient China in Guo Wenjing's Feng Yi Ting, a one-act opera set during the decay of the Han Dynasty (late 2nd century AD).  The events swirl around a plot to murder the autocratic imperial councillor Dong Zhou, in which Diao Chan (Shen Tiemei) seductively persuades Lu Bu (Jiang Qihu), Dong's godson, to do the deed.  They meet at the tea pavilion which gives the opera its name, and is the only scene of action.

Guo Wenjing's storytelling, based on Chinese traditions, upends most of what we have come to expect from western opera.  Diao lays out much of the plot in a prologue, and when Lu Bu appears, their conversation is matter of fact - no hugger-mugger drama, here. Jiang Qihu sings Lu Bu in countertenor, where Western convention would probably have him a baritone.  And the climactic murder, though on-stage, takes place buried behind scenery.

Yet there is no lack of drama in this production. Atom Egoyan's cleverly minimal direction, featuring careful shadowplay with lines of Chinese figurines, creates a foreboding sense of armies on the move with Diao Chan, playing among them, as a puppetmistress. The choreography, willowy for Diao Chan and aggressively stilted for Lu Bu, also contributes to the dramatic contrast.

Finally, there is Guo's brilliant score.  Much like Baroque opera, the music attaches certain moods to the characters - seductive and resolute for Diao Chan, dark and martial for Lu Bu - and the subtle slippage between moods tells the story at least as well as the words.  Guo is a master of transition, seducing the ear throughout the opera's forty-minute length. The Ensemble ACJW, supplemented by traditional Chinese instruments, gave a controlled, menacing reading under conductor Ken Lam.

Feng Yi Ting wraps up tonight at 7:30 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater (John Jay College). Tickets available online or at the box office.

Greetings from the Berkshires, where I'm happy to be back after not having made my annual pilgrimage here last summer. At Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony, things have been especially festive this season as they celebrate their 75th anniversary with a series of gala concerts and other events. In addition, the BSO is marking the occasion by releasing a series of archive recordings from past Tanglewood seasons, available online. (They're free to stream for 24 hours, after which they can be downloaded for $5-10.)

I arrived last night just in time to catch the pianist Gerhard Oppitz at Ozawa Hall, who has spent the past two weeks surveying all of Brahms' piano music. (He also played Mozart's 24th piano concerto last Sunday in the Shed.) Oppitz, who's relatively unknown in the states, is a pianist in the classic German tradition, and has made Brahms' piano music - itself relatively obscure - something of a specialty.

To be sure, Brahms' piano music is an acquired taste, lacking the narrative arc of Beethoven's sonatas, or the sheer firepower of Chopin or Liszt. By contrast, Brahms' music is more rigid and structured, its colors far more subtle - traits which tend to work better in the collective dynamic of chamber or orchestral music, for which Brahms is far better known. But, Brahms was himself a pianist, and the music he wrote for the instrument was highly personal, reflecting the many ups and downs of his life.