Another great weekend in the Berkshires, though shorter this time, and a little less packed with activity.
We saw two very satisfying concerts led by Kurt Masur. Mr. Masur is 82 years old and worked entirely without a musical score for both concerts. He has tremors in his hands. It looks like he's giving extra instructions to the orchestra, but somehow the orchestra understands all his nuances and plays masterfully under him. His eyes sparkle and he clearly loves the musicians, often blowing them kisses at the end of a piece. He also is much more concerned with recognizing the musicians than in being recognized himself. The orchestra seems completely devoted to him, in turn. It all makes for very good chemistry.
We were sitting up front and way to the side for both concerts, giving us a good perspective on the conductor's face and allowing me to hear parts of the orchestra that somehow don't come across as clearly when heard head on.
The first concert was Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, with a young and very good pianist, David Fray (someone we'd never heard of until the event, though there was a short blurb about him in the Globe on Friday). He earned a standing ovation for his first performance at Tanglewood, a nice accolade.
The second concert was all-Mendelsohn, but three "greatest hits" pieces, all very familiar. The soloist was Gil Shaham, whom we first stumbled on in London, on a night when we couldn't find an open theater, so decided to go to a concert. That night long ago, we heard a wild, showy violinist who sounded in danger of burning up his instrument. This weekend, we heard a wildly restrained violinist with amazing control over his instrument, especially at the higher notes. I kept thinking that it would be hard to find another soloist this good with this piece.
Unfortunately, the weather was highly uncooperative, dumping massive amounts of rain on the area in short amounts of time. Both nights, the lawn was nearly empty, a sight I've never seen before. Good thing, then, that for next week's five sold-out performances, James Taylor is donating his entire fee (a cool half mil) to Tanglewood. Good for him, and I'm sure, especially appreciated this year.
A side-benefit at Tanglewood was that we bumped into a fellow contra dancer who lives in the area, someone we haven't seen for ages. She volunteers as a greeter there, and we got to catch up with her on both nights. Very sweet person and we may have convinced her to come to dance camp this fall.
On Saturday during the day, we went to the Norman Rockwell museum, where they have two main exhibits. One is a a traveling exhibit of "greatest hits," now back home. We've seen many of these pieces before, but now they have great explanatory plaques. It was like visiting again with old friends.
The second exhibit is of NR's son's work, a lot of sculptures and some water colors. I especially enjoyed a series of small bronzes - tiny, exuberant, in-the-moment, acrobatic human figures.
One of the exciting things about this museum is that NR died just 30 years ago, which means that many people still remember him. It's fun to listen in on tours because they're mostly stories about NR, gossipy without a touch of meanness, and not so much scholarly dissertations on the art. I've actually met two models for his paintings, one a co-worker, and one the model for "The Problem We All Live With." The spirit of NR is very much kept alive.
As a side-note, Robert said that in the 18 years of knowing me, he's never seen me stand up for such an extended time as I did on Saturday. I was really enjoying myself and fortunately came away not even needing my usual ibuprofen antidote.
On this visit, we stayed at our favorite place, in a little out-of-the-way town that most people don't know about (ssshh! don't tell anyone!). We've now stayed there at least six times. We love staying in a place where the owners grew up, hearing family stories, and even hearing about the current struggles the family is going through. Yesterday, we sat at the breakfast table for three hours, first talking to other guests and then to family members.
And then we came home. We flew down the Pike - the Sunday afternoon traffic hadn't picked up yet. Our neighbor did a great job taking care of the cats, so they were happy to see us and seemingly undisturbed that we'd been away.
And now... on to the week and the long-awaited real vacation which starts at the end of this week.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
excellent weekend - practice vacation 1
This August, we have two tiny practice vacations in the Berkshires before going on our real vacation at the end of the month. We had our first practice this past weekend, and what a lovely time it was.
At this point, we have two favorite places to stay in the Berkshires, and given that we go about twice a year, we get to stay in each every year. This time, we stayed with Richard on his llama farm. Richard has three guest rooms and fascinating guests every time. He lives on a stunning piece of property half way up a mountain, with beautiful views to the west and the rest of the mountain (and over 100 square miles of public land) rising behind. We were privileged to go on a llama trek, this time with him. It turns out that he loves noticing animal tracks and reconstructing the story. We saw many deer tracks, some walking, some running, some raccoon, turkey, and coyote tracks. We even found some scat and Richard was able to tell us what the animal had been eating -- fruit and voles.
On Thursday night, we went to a performance at Tanglewood in the littler hall (Seiji Ozawa), which is stunning -- I often wish Mark had lived long enough to see it. One of the clever parts of its design is that the back of the hall rises to two massive doors. For concerts, the doors are open and the floor continues directly onto the lawn, which continues to rise.
We saw just about our favorite dance troupe -- Mark Morris, accompanied (in part) by two little-known but talented musicians -- Yo Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax. I'm sure they'll make it some day with a little more practice. I wanted to sit through the performance five times. It was hard to know whether to listen to the music, watch the dancers, look at the hall, try to integrate the whole experience (really hard), or just sit and let the experience come to me. In the end, I decided that if we were disappointed with every thing else this weekend, this performance would have made the trip worthwhile. Of course, that was far from the case: MMDG was only the beginning of a great time.
Friday, we headed up to the Clark Museum in the Northwest corner of the state. This is one of my favorite museums, both for its permanent collections and for its special exhibitions. They currently have an exhibit on Georgia O'Keefe and one of her mentors, Arthur Dove. The curators at this museum have a special talent for juxtaposing works so that you can compare themes, styles, ideas, which all made the exhibit even more wonderful.
Last year in New Mexico, we saw a lot of O'Keefe's works at her museum in Santa Fe. We also drove over to Abiqui to see Ghost Ranch where she did a lot of her southwest work. So it was especially interesting this year to see an exhibit mostly of east coast work with a little southwest thrown in.
We revisited an exhibit we saw last year of American landscapes in the permanent collection. Landscapes are typically not my favorite, but these are great -- powerful, evocative -- and it's a small exhibit of large works.
They've just opened a new trail through their nearly vertical meadow, so we took the long way to their two-year old conservation and exhibit building. On entry to the meadow, we were met by two stunningly beautiful horses who sniffed us all over to see if we'd brought them treats. I called them the attack horses, but really, they were very gentle and happy to be petted if not fed. The walk was complete with gorgeous views of the next mountain over, of woods and meadow flowers. The resident cows barely glanced at us and resumed their munching.
The new building, the Stone Center, could be the most awful kind of architecture in less skilled hands. Instead, it is modern and purposeful and well integrated into its surroundings. They are running a lovely exhibit on Japanese landscapes (from about 150 years ago) and modern Japanese ceramics. Later, we sat on their patio and had a light lunch just so we could watch the landscape some more.
That evening, we headed to Jacob's Pillow for a dance performance of Rennie Harris. RH is a hip-hop artist with street training who came to formal dance later in life. Last time we saw him, he was just working with men, and now women have joined his troupe. The beat rocks and so do the dancers. Amazing work.
On Saturday, we visited the Berkshire Botanical Garden, always a treat. They have a meandering path around a park with different types of gardens -- cottage, herb, rock, water, farm. It's a peaceful place.
Then we headed back to Jacob's Pillow to see a talk I'd noticed in the brochure the night before -- Rachel Maddow speaking about public policy and the arts. Doesn't that sound like the most boring topic imaginable? Of course, it wasn't. She was funny, delightful, insightful. She started by giving a history of Jacob's Pillow, complete with tiny eye wiggles and admiration. She talked about funding arts as an act of patriotism. During audience questions, someone mentioned that they'd read that RM's partner is an artist and suddenly the conversation switched from the political to the personal.
At the beginning, during the history portion, RM said that she originally thought 10 people would come and so she'd brought a picture to pass around. Given that about 1000 of us showed up (dancers, grandmothers, baby dykes, us, everyone in between), she decided that was a little impractical. We didn't get to see the picture, buy Boy Howdy (as she would say), we did get to see her.
That evening, we went back to Tanglewood to see a Prokofiev symphony (very short, very listenable) and the star attraction, Carmina Burana. Perhaps I should mention that I despise classical singing and this piece not only has three soloists but an adult chorus and a children's chorus. And we still went. And it was fantastic. I've heard recordings over the years, but to see it live was an absolute privelege.
Yesterday, we went on our llama hike, then headed back to Tanglewood for a long concert with four pieces, all by people I'm unfamiliar with. Shostakovitch was perhaps the most familiar name. Some of the descriptions (atonal, for example) made some of the pieces sound frightening, but they were all very easy and pleasant to listen to. But the star attraction was Yo Yo Ma (again) and a young conductor who got his big break last summer when James Levine fell ill at the start of the summer season. Both were excellent, and Yo Yo Ma makes nearly every piece we've heard him perform into something listenable.
Then home, and work starts up shortly. Phew. What a great time. And we get to go back soon.
At this point, we have two favorite places to stay in the Berkshires, and given that we go about twice a year, we get to stay in each every year. This time, we stayed with Richard on his llama farm. Richard has three guest rooms and fascinating guests every time. He lives on a stunning piece of property half way up a mountain, with beautiful views to the west and the rest of the mountain (and over 100 square miles of public land) rising behind. We were privileged to go on a llama trek, this time with him. It turns out that he loves noticing animal tracks and reconstructing the story. We saw many deer tracks, some walking, some running, some raccoon, turkey, and coyote tracks. We even found some scat and Richard was able to tell us what the animal had been eating -- fruit and voles.
On Thursday night, we went to a performance at Tanglewood in the littler hall (Seiji Ozawa), which is stunning -- I often wish Mark had lived long enough to see it. One of the clever parts of its design is that the back of the hall rises to two massive doors. For concerts, the doors are open and the floor continues directly onto the lawn, which continues to rise.
We saw just about our favorite dance troupe -- Mark Morris, accompanied (in part) by two little-known but talented musicians -- Yo Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax. I'm sure they'll make it some day with a little more practice. I wanted to sit through the performance five times. It was hard to know whether to listen to the music, watch the dancers, look at the hall, try to integrate the whole experience (really hard), or just sit and let the experience come to me. In the end, I decided that if we were disappointed with every thing else this weekend, this performance would have made the trip worthwhile. Of course, that was far from the case: MMDG was only the beginning of a great time.
Friday, we headed up to the Clark Museum in the Northwest corner of the state. This is one of my favorite museums, both for its permanent collections and for its special exhibitions. They currently have an exhibit on Georgia O'Keefe and one of her mentors, Arthur Dove. The curators at this museum have a special talent for juxtaposing works so that you can compare themes, styles, ideas, which all made the exhibit even more wonderful.
Last year in New Mexico, we saw a lot of O'Keefe's works at her museum in Santa Fe. We also drove over to Abiqui to see Ghost Ranch where she did a lot of her southwest work. So it was especially interesting this year to see an exhibit mostly of east coast work with a little southwest thrown in.
We revisited an exhibit we saw last year of American landscapes in the permanent collection. Landscapes are typically not my favorite, but these are great -- powerful, evocative -- and it's a small exhibit of large works.
They've just opened a new trail through their nearly vertical meadow, so we took the long way to their two-year old conservation and exhibit building. On entry to the meadow, we were met by two stunningly beautiful horses who sniffed us all over to see if we'd brought them treats. I called them the attack horses, but really, they were very gentle and happy to be petted if not fed. The walk was complete with gorgeous views of the next mountain over, of woods and meadow flowers. The resident cows barely glanced at us and resumed their munching.
The new building, the Stone Center, could be the most awful kind of architecture in less skilled hands. Instead, it is modern and purposeful and well integrated into its surroundings. They are running a lovely exhibit on Japanese landscapes (from about 150 years ago) and modern Japanese ceramics. Later, we sat on their patio and had a light lunch just so we could watch the landscape some more.
That evening, we headed to Jacob's Pillow for a dance performance of Rennie Harris. RH is a hip-hop artist with street training who came to formal dance later in life. Last time we saw him, he was just working with men, and now women have joined his troupe. The beat rocks and so do the dancers. Amazing work.
On Saturday, we visited the Berkshire Botanical Garden, always a treat. They have a meandering path around a park with different types of gardens -- cottage, herb, rock, water, farm. It's a peaceful place.
Then we headed back to Jacob's Pillow to see a talk I'd noticed in the brochure the night before -- Rachel Maddow speaking about public policy and the arts. Doesn't that sound like the most boring topic imaginable? Of course, it wasn't. She was funny, delightful, insightful. She started by giving a history of Jacob's Pillow, complete with tiny eye wiggles and admiration. She talked about funding arts as an act of patriotism. During audience questions, someone mentioned that they'd read that RM's partner is an artist and suddenly the conversation switched from the political to the personal.
At the beginning, during the history portion, RM said that she originally thought 10 people would come and so she'd brought a picture to pass around. Given that about 1000 of us showed up (dancers, grandmothers, baby dykes, us, everyone in between), she decided that was a little impractical. We didn't get to see the picture, buy Boy Howdy (as she would say), we did get to see her.
That evening, we went back to Tanglewood to see a Prokofiev symphony (very short, very listenable) and the star attraction, Carmina Burana. Perhaps I should mention that I despise classical singing and this piece not only has three soloists but an adult chorus and a children's chorus. And we still went. And it was fantastic. I've heard recordings over the years, but to see it live was an absolute privelege.
Yesterday, we went on our llama hike, then headed back to Tanglewood for a long concert with four pieces, all by people I'm unfamiliar with. Shostakovitch was perhaps the most familiar name. Some of the descriptions (atonal, for example) made some of the pieces sound frightening, but they were all very easy and pleasant to listen to. But the star attraction was Yo Yo Ma (again) and a young conductor who got his big break last summer when James Levine fell ill at the start of the summer season. Both were excellent, and Yo Yo Ma makes nearly every piece we've heard him perform into something listenable.
Then home, and work starts up shortly. Phew. What a great time. And we get to go back soon.
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