Yuja Wang and Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood: Stormy Music with Real Atmosphere

Tanglewood Music Festival

The Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert

Andris Nelsons, conductor

Yuja Wang, piano

Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Koussevitzky Music Shed

Lenox, MA

Sergei Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Opus 16

Hector Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique

 I. “Rêveries – Passions” (Daydreams—passions)

 II. “Un bal” (A Ball)

 III. “Scène aux champs” (Scene in the country)

 IV. “Marche au supplice” (March to the scaffold)

  V. “Songe d’une nuit de sabbat” (Dream of a night of a witches’ sabbath)

 Yuja Wang and Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood: Stormy Music with Real Atmosphere

 Today’s concert was full of musical and extra-musical wonder.  First, one of the greatest piano virtuosos of our time, Yuja Wang, performed the seldomly heard Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, Halloween music of sorts, brimming with grotesqueries, a creepy cortege, and things that go bump and bang in the afternoon. The second movement, a moto perpetuo, is breathtaking and taken at a breakneck tempo. The Intermezzo, a gnarlish and sardonic passacaglia, is full of tritones (the “devil in music”) and quickly picks up momentum switching from an eight-note period to a four-note figure.  The widely spaced jumps in the theme are filled with seductive and dreamy glissandi. Ms. Wang has championed this concerto for years, and its spectral melodrama and scintillating virtuosity surprises all first-time listeners. The stirring finale is yet another that ensures cheers and exultations.

Ms. Wang chose three encores with which she frequently appends her concerts.  First came Sibelius’ sentimental, yet delightful, Étude op. 76 no. 2; then Liszt’s dazzling arrangement of Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” op.2; and, finally, Vladimir Horowitz’s over-the-top Variations on a Theme from Carmen.

For days after this event, I stocked up on Ms. Wang’s CDs, including a new all-Shostakovich release featuring the composer’s two piano concertos and selections from his preludes and fugues for solo piano.

Yuja Wang, Piano with Andris Nelsons, Conducting Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No 2

The second half of the concert presented Mr. Nelson’s highly original interpretation of an historical BSO standby: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.  Charles Munch’s aggressive and propulsive performances in the 1960s pushed the orchestra to its technical limits. Over the years, many conductors have had their way with this expansive program symphony with its startlingly original orchestral effects, near- literal musical depictions, and melodrama.

The extra-musical surprise in store at this concert was the seemingly synchronized disruption of “severe weather” starting in the third movement of the symphony--Scène aux champs.  As announcements were made to “take shelter,” something of a source of confusion for those in the shed who were already sheltered, audience members mistakenly started to stream out for safety, while lawn-seaters rushed in to take the newly emptied seats.  Just after the shepherds’ ranz des vaches (featuring an offstage outdoor oboist), it was clear that the cows had indeed headed for the barn as horizontal sheets of rain began spraying the audience.  The four timpani that imitate a distant storm were given Mother Nature’s response of superior percussive rumbles.  The chaos continued through the March au supplice when a rising sense of anxiety and doom began to be felt by a distracted audience.  Mr. Nelsons, I think, took advantage of the accompanying elements, by playing with greater vehemence.  By the time of the witches’ sabbath, the rains and wind gave the “Dies irae,” brass and bells that extra je ne sais quoi to fancy the arrival of something apocalyptic.  Of course, in the old days of Tanglewood, these storms occurred all the time.  In today’s atmospherically aberrant parade of rain disasters and lethal floods, one was easily persuaded, with Berlioz’s help, that our time was up.  Again, Andris Nelsons, undeterred by the noisy ambiance, performed the last measures with an almost frenetic energy.  It turned out to be one of the most inspired readings I’ve heard with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.  Thunderous applause indeed.