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Steve Metcalf has been writing about the musical life of this region, and the wider world, for more than 30 years. For 21 of those years, he was the full-time staff music critic of The Hartford Courant. During that period, via the L.A. Times/Washington Post news service, his reviews, profiles and feature stories appeared in 400 newspapers worldwide.He is also the former assistant dean and director of instrumental music at The Hartt School, where he founded and curated the Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series. He is currently Director of the Presidents' College at the University of Hartford. Steve is also keyboardist emeritus of the needlessly loud rock band Duke and the Esoterics.Reach him at spmetcalf55@gmail.com.

As Winter Descends, Dreams of Tanglewood

Ian Douglas Photography
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Yuja Wang/Facebook
Yuja Wang.
What better time to contemplate the upcoming Tanglewood summer music season?

Credit Marco Borggreve / AndrisNelsons.com
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AndrisNelsons.com
Andris Nelsons.

The calendar has just flipped over to December, CVS has stockpiled its ineffective windshield scrapers up near the cash registers, the newspaper food sections are starting to feature hearty soup recipes, and recently for the first time in many months I found the word “sleet” in the ten-day forecast.

What better time to contemplate the upcoming Tanglewood summer music season?

The Boston Symphony’s fabled summer festival just released its 2016 lineup. The details are getting more than the usual amount of scrutiny because this will be the first season that second-year BSO music director Andris Nelsons will have participated in the planning.

Nelsons assigned himself just four concerts with the BSO, so if you want to get a look at the lithesome Latvian in person, your choices will be limited.

Then again, the man seems drawn to big statements. Among other works, he will take on Mahler 9, Beethoven 7, and, in perhaps the biggest statement of the summer, a concert presentation of Acts I and II of Verdi’s "Aida."

The latter will star his wife, soprano Kristine Opolais, as the doomed title character.

Elsewhere during the season, the usual cavalcade of star soloists  (Joshua Bell, Renee Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, Yefim Bronfman, Emanuel Ax, Menahem Pressler) will file through, along with a healthy sprinkling of younger phenoms, including pianists Jonathan Biss and the dangerous-to-describe Yuja Wang.

Guest conductors include Christoph von Dohnanyi, Charles Dutoit and Andrew Davis.

Two other notable dates:

June 25: A Prairie Home Companion 

An early season visit from Garrison Keillor and his troupe has become a regular feature at Tanglewood. 

This year’s installment will be a piece of history: Keillor has announced (and says he really means it this time) that this will be his final season of hosting his live radio variety show, a show that has managed over the years to juxtapose jokes about the ways of Lutherans, roots-music stars and would-be stars, political sketch satire (often of Voltairesque bite), gentle Midwest monologues concerning bachelor farmers, and as often as not, first-rate performances of classical music, sometimes with the distinguished soloist later chipping in with a bonus cameo in one of the sketches.

If you prize the PHC phenomenon – I’m an unrepentant fan – you will want to get yourself up to Lenox for this one.

Credit Dame Edna Everage / Facebook
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Facebook
Dame Edna Everage, a character created by Barry Humphries.

August 14:Barry Humphries’ Weimar Concert

Humphries, an Australian institution best known to American audiences as Dame Edna Everage (a character he has retired, alas), hosts and performs in this showcase of the “degenerate” music of Weimar of the 20s and 30s. Songs by Weill, Krenek, Schulhoff and others will be featured, with Humphries joined by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the “transgressive cabaret sensation” Meow Meow (Melissa Madden Gray).

This is almost certainly the first concert in Tanglewood’s 75-year history to carry the warning: "This concert contains adult themes. Parental guidance for those under the age of 15 is recommended."

I wonder, incidentally, how the age 15 was arrived at.

The End of An Era

I’ve just learned that Steve Mitchell has resigned his position as Minister of Music and Arts at Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford. He had been in the job 16 years.

I was never a member of AHCC, but over the years I’ve certainly attended countless concerts, festivals and celebrations, Sunday morning services and other events at which music was a central, if not the exclusive component. Even when he was not personally performing, Steve was the guiding force behind all of it.

I always admired Steve’s versatility, his enterprise, and the special skill that it takes to deal with the wide-ranging musical tastes and expectations of a large and diverse (and opinionated) modern day congregation. Steve helped to make AHCC one of the great and important presenters of music in these parts, and all of us who care about the arts in Hartford owe him our gratitude. Well done, maestro.

The Beginning of An Era

The Yale School of Music has announced that Peter Oundjian has been named principal conductor of the YalePhilharmonia, the school’s venerable and widely admired orchestra.

In his new post, Oundjian will conduct three concerts every year with the Philharmonia and will participate in the selection of guest conductors and repertoire.

Oundjian is one of the relatively few musical figures of our time who has made a successful mid-career transition from world-class performer (first violinist of the Tokyo Quartet for 14 years) to world-class conductor. In the latter category, he is best known for having been the music director of the Toronto Symphony since 2004.

Above Average Trivia: Oundjian is a cousin of former Python Eric Idle.

Steve Metcalf was The Hartford Courant's Fulltime classical music critic and reporter for over 20 years, beginning in 1982. He is currently the curator of the Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series at The Hartt School. He can be reached at spmetcalf55@gmail.com.

Steve Metcalf is an administrator, critic, journalist, arts consultant and composer. He writes the weekly Metcalf on Music blog for WNPR.org, and is the curator of the Richard P. Garmany Chamber Music Series at The Hartt School.

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