practice vaca #2 - back to the berkshires

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.