#Gclassical guitar shed full#

First, it was down the rabbit hole with Henri Dutilleux’s seemingly chaotic but undeniably intuitive “Métaboles.” After intermission, Elizabeth Rowe’s crystalline solo flute beckoned us into dreamy, sunlit meadows with Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” and the evening finished with a vibrant grand tour through Ravel’s “Mother Goose.” The rest of the program was spent in fantastical fairylands. As an encore, Kavakos offered a dry, skittering arrangement of Tarrega’s classical guitar piece “Recuerdos de la Alhambra.” (I’ll say it as many times as I need to: Performers, please, announce your encores.) He was solidly in sync with Slobodeniouk, and the conductor hammered strong accents into the orchestral texture, throwing the familiar tunes into sharp relief. I would have liked this particular concerto with a little more mischief and a little less urgency, but that’s individual preference.

A sense of urgency pervades everything he plays, even the sweet and lyrical. Kavakos has been a regular presence with the BSO since the mid-2000s, but since teaming up with Ax and Ma for multiple projects in the past several years, he has started to become a Tanglewood fixture in his own right, and most of his performances have been unassailable. Hilary Scottĭima Slobodeniouk led the BSO the next night in a program of French music with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor (starring Kavakos) curiously plunked in the middle. Add the come-one-and-all spirit of the Tanglewood lawn, and it’s a match made in heaven.Ĭellist Yo-Yo Ma performing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conductor Cristian Măcelaru at Tanglewood. (A special round of bravos for the crew of yellow-vested parking coordinators, who had to wrangle two Yo-Yo-size crowds this weekend.) The reason they have such pull is only partially because of their musical skills the rest can be credited to the fact that they don’t just perform music, but serve as ambassadors for it, and they are very good at what they do.

#Gclassical guitar shed full#

Whenever he appears for any reason at Tanglewood, full parking lots and heavy traffic are inevitable. Even people who don’t know classical music know who Ma is. The BSO doesn’t let just anyone use the Shed when it takes a night off, but Ax and Ma aren’t just anyone. To everyone else, they’re among the brightest stars to shine from the Koussevitzky Music Shed stage. To the Tanglewood community, they’re just Manny and Yo-Yo two stellar musicians who happen to be fixtures of the festival. At this point, they’re part of the DNA of summers at Tanglewood, as much as picnicking and the smell of citronella candles. LENOX - The friendship between cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax began over a half century ago in the Juilliard School cafeteria, according to Ma’s Facebook page.