Past and present always intermingle at a venerable, large-scale festival like Tanglewood. The areas preeminent summer music destination whose Boston Symphony offerings get underway next weekend changes each year, as new faces make debuts and leave their own impressions, and a new crop of students visit the Tanglewood Music Center to absorb musical wisdom from the centers faculty. And yet a sense of history is everywhere, even in the names that adorn its structures: the Koussevitzky Music Shed, Ozawa Hall, the Leonard Bernstein Pavilion, the Aaron Copland Library. The past is always present, everywhere you walk.
As Tanglewood approaches its 75th anniversary, to be observed next year, the BSO is embarking on a mission to make its history even more visible. One part of that effort is the installation of a sculpture of Aaron Copland, one of the earliest members of the composition faculty of what was known in 1940 as the Berkshire Music Center. After Coplands death in 1990, his ashes were scattered near the top of the Tanglewood lawn. The statue was scheduled to be unveiled yesterday near the same spot.
The sculpture is a gift of another Tanglewood VIP composer and conductor John Williams. According to material provided by the BSO, the idea came about through discussions with former trustee chair Ed Linde, and continued with his widow, Joyce, after Lindes death in 2010. The Copland sculpture was created by Penelope Jencks. It was Jenckss sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt in New Yorks Riverside Park one of her best-known works that convinced Williams to invite her to undertake the project.
Jencks was an apt choice: Her father was noted composer Gardner Jencks, she grew up in a highly musical household, and she admires Coplands music. But it was Coplands physical attributes that provided the true spark for her creation.
His head is extraordinary, she said by phone earlier this week. Jencks used copies of many photographs from the BSOs archive and videotapes of Copland conducting in her research. The dramatic shape of his head, with its high hairline, made her subject a sculptors dream. And that kind of led everything to where it needed to go.
The bronze sculpture centers on that striking physiognomy, portraying him from the middle of his chest to the top of his head. It measures about 24 inches high by 15 inches wide and sits on a granite base that brings it to a height of just over 6 feet, Jencks estimates. She demurred when asked whether she wanted a viewer to take away a particular impression of Copland from her work.
The dialogue that goes on between the artist and the work is a kind of private dialogue, she said. I dont like to try to make it into words. So the answer is, you really have to see it to see what you think about it. And hopefully youll get some understanding of who Aaron Copland was.
Jencks is at work on the other two sculptures in this project, of Bernstein and Koussevitzky. No date has been set for their completion.
Dutoits busy schedule Next Fridays opening-night BSO concert, an all-Italian program, was originally supposed to have been conducted by soon-to-be-former music director James Levine, who has withdrawn from all Tanglewood activities. The concert will instead be led by Charles Dutoit, last seen closing out the BSOs Symphony Hall season in Berliozs Romeo et Juliette in May. Dutoit will also preside over Saturdays performance of the Berlioz Requiem.
Frankly, its surprising that Dutoit had time to step in for these concerts. In addition to guest conducting duties here and elsewhere, he is currently serving as artistic director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and as chief conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In Philadelphia he was brought in to calm the waters after that orchestras unhappy split with former music director Christoph Eschenbach, and he will have to guide the orchestra through its current financial crisis.
As if all that werent enough, Dutoit is exploring the possibility of assembling an orchestra of young players from North and South Korea. According to a story in the Korea Times, Dutoit recently traveled to Pyongyang with his wife, violinist Chantal Juillet, to discuss the possibility of creating the group. The two were instrumental in establishing the Lindenbaum Music Festival, which is based in Seoul. The festivals director, Won Hyung-joon, was quoted in the story saying that although political tensions between the two countries remain high, this is a non-political agenda that can unite adolescents from the two Koreas in peaceful, musical harmony.
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