Tanglewood 2019, Part 2: A mighty wind

I spent the last weekend in July at the Tanglewood Music Festival in the scenic Berkshires as part of a group of two dozen music critics attending the annual meeting of the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA). It was a Wagner weekend, with three of the four concerts on our schedule dedicated to a complete concert performance of Die Walküre: Act I on Saturday night and Acts II and III in separate concerts on Sunday. Not surprisingly, the Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) sessions we attended were focused entirely on Wagner and his world.

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Andris Nelsons
Photo courtesy of Boston Symphony Orchestra

Saturday, July 27th, began with Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons conducting an open rehearsal of Act III of Die Walküre with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. Opportunities to "look under the hood" like this are always fascinating, and this one was no exception, as Mr. Nelsons polished up moments that, in the actual concert, would take a back seat to the singers.

It was a reminder of how much the orchestra advances and comments on the story in Wagner's "Ring" operas through the composer's ingenious use of leitmotifs , those short musical phrases associated with specific characters and concepts. The way in which Wagner maintained a massive database of these themes in his head and manipulated them through the entire 17 hours of the "Ring" cycle never fails to astonish me. Wagner may have been an awful human being, but there's no gainsaying the brilliance of his art.

A word about the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra is in order. The TMC is a summer academy for young (primarily college-age) musicians founded by the legendary BSO Music Director Serge Koussevitzky as the Berkshire Music Center in 1940. The organization continued to thrive under subsequent BSO Music Directors like Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, and James Levine, with input from luminaries such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Leon Fleisher. Today, as the BSO web site proudly proclaims, "20 percent of the members of American symphony orchestras, and 30 percent of all first-chair players, studied at the TMC."

So, not surprisingly, the kids played like real pros at the rehearsal. I was especially taken with the brass section.

Wagner tuba

Speaking of which: a lunch with members of the orchestra was followed by a session on "Sonic Bridges: Wagner and Brass Instruments," once again led by the redoubtable Sue Elliott. As an old low brass guy (trombone, euphonium, Sousaphone), I very much enjoyed learning about the creative ways in which Wagner used familiar brass instruments like the horn, as well as his use of unusual instruments like the contrabass tuba (used primary for scenes with the giants in Das Rheingold), the Stierhorn (a valveless horn dating back to the Middle Ages), and the bass trumpet.

Wagner even went to far as to have a special instrument built that now bears his name: the Wagner tuba. Inspired by a visit to the workshop of noted Parisian instrument-maker Adolphe Saxe, the Wagner tuba was constructed to the composer's specifications by the Moritz firm in Berlin. It looks rather like my old friend the euphonium but has a range similar to that of a French horn, with which it shares the same conical mouthpiece.

To this day, the Wagner tuba is rarely heard outside of the "Ring" operas, although Bruckner calls for it in his later symphonies, as does Richard Strauss in his Alpine Symphony. As a result, Ms. Elliott pointed out, orchestras usually keep some Wagner tubas on hand since the French horn players who usually play the instrument are unlikely to have one of their own.

L-R: Franz-Josef Selig, Amber Wager,
Andris Nelsons, Simon O'Neill
Photo courtesy of Boston Symphony

The big event of the day, though, was the concert version of Act I of Die Walküre that night. The first act is the story of how Siegmund stumbles into the home of Sieglinde, his twin sister from whom he has been separated since birth and whom he does not recognize. Sieglinde's husband, Hunding, has been hunting Siegmund and challenges him to a fight to the death in the morning. Siegmund and Sieglinde fall in love. Sieglinde drugs Hunding and flees with Siegmund, but not before the latter plucks a magical sword from the trunk of a tree in Hunding's house.

Yes, that sounds absurd, but with Wagner's music and libretto it becomes a gripping story of overwhelming passion and heroic determination, especially when performed by a cast as strong as this one. As Sieglinde and Siegmund, soprano Amber Wagner and tenor Simon O'Neill displayed credible passion and sang with stunning power. Bass Franz-Josef Selig radiated gravitas as Hunding and sang with authority. Andris Nelsons led the students of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in a rousing account of the score. I could not have been happier.