Tanglewood Marathon Report .....plus

It's been busy here. Last weekend was our marathon of volunteering at Tanglewood: 4 concerts and one rehearsal, and yesterday we attended a picnic aimed at raising funds for students at Tanglewood. We followed the picnic with a play performed at the Mount, Edith Wharton's estate in Lenox.

All this was combined with some bike riding, some kayaking by Jean, and for the last three days, taking our youngest grandchild, Henry, to a kitchen chemistry "camp" at the Berkshire Museum.

One of the highlights of the past several days was  spending time with cousins, Tami and Aaron, and Susan and Edward. Hope to see more of them soon.

We stayed three nights at the very nice Howden Farm in Sheffield MA, a place famous for their pumpkins.

A not so quick summary of the music:
Friday we heard great performances of minor masterpieces. Mozart Piano Concerto Number 12 was beautifully performed by Paul Lewis, my favorite living classical pianist. Manfred Honeck did a superb job conducting this piece and Mendelsohn's 4th Symphony ( the Italian).

Saturday Honeck did a great job with the massive Mahler's Seond Symphony. Honeck is the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and organization known for under appreciated great conductors. I hope Honeck becomes a regular at Tanglewood. He served as a replacement for Von Dohnanyi who was ill.

Jacque Lacombe of the New Jersey Symphony  replaced the recently deceased Raphael Frubeck du Burgos ( who will be greatly missed) with a good, not great, performance of the Rachmaninoff  2nd Piano Concerto with Gabriela Montero, and very good job with the second act of Verdi's Aida.

This brings us [if you are still with me] to Monday's concert by the Tanglewood Music Center orchestra. The orchestra players are among the best "rising" musicians, and their performances are comparable to great orchestras despite their only playing together for a  few weeks. David Cohen did a magnificent job with the Beethoven's overture to Fidelio and another , more experienced conductor [ yes, I forgot his name] did a bout as  well with Beethoven's Sixth, the pastoral.

By the way, the play we saw last night was about Beethoven's unsuccessful search for a wife and included several of his works from the first few years of the nineteenth century.