TMC Nights, 2012, including the Festival of Contemporary Music, by Michael Miller

Seiji Ozawa Hall. Photo © 2012 Michael Miller.

The Boston Symphony played a few brilliant concerts in the shed in this anniversary year — not least Charles Dutoit’s two days of Berlioz, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, but the real excitement came from Ozawa Hall, as the TMC Fellows played with the full excitement of youth in a series of demanding concerts, all weighted towards the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in consistently stimulating and coherent programs, divided between the regular TMC schedule and the Festival of Contemporary Music. This was, in addition, the most satisfying FCM since the Elliott Carter Tribute, because the selection of composers not only had its own coherence in Oliver Knussen’s experience and taste; he had the wisdom to restrict the number of composers, so that we could hear more than a single work by the less familiar of them. Unfortunately the Festival was scheduled a week later than usual, creating a conflict with the first weekend of the Bard Festival, and I didn’t get to hear as many of the concerts as I’d have liked. I hope that the postponement of the FCM was due to the Tanglewood 75th anniversary celebrations and that it will return to its usual slot in the first week of August. There are plenty of people who are interested in both Festivals, and they shouldn’t have to make a choice.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!