Cristian Măcelaru conducts Anna Clyne, Elgar, Debussy, and Enescu featuring Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Tanglewood
Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox/Stockbridge, MA
The Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser Concert
Romanian conductor Cristian Măcelaru, a 2010 Tanglewood Music Center Fellow, makes his BSO debut. Masquerade, by the U.S.-based English composer Anna Clyne, evokes the unique milieu of mid-18th-century London promenade concerts; this is the BSO’s first performance of Clyne’s music. Tanglewood favorite Yo-Yo Ma joins for Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, one of the English composer’s final works, in part a profoundly lyrical meditation on a world in turmoil after the devastation of World War I. Claude Debussy’s La Mer—a work given its American premiere by the BSO in 1907—is virtually a three-movement symphony miraculously depicting in music the changing states of the sea and sun over the course of a day. Closing the concert is Romanian composer Georges Enescu, one of the 20th-century’s greatest musicians. His familiar Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, based on his country’s folk music, is a delightful and finely wrought staple of Pops orchestras.
Gates open at 12pm
Performance Details
Aug 14, 2022, 2:30pm EDT
Featuring
Program Notes & Works
Masquerade
Taking its cue from the “Proms” idea of the commission, her five-minute, single-movement Masquerade combines the imagery of a festival, multilayered outdoor activity with familiar musical ideas smeared and reconfigured into new ways of sounding.
Cello Concerto
Unlike the traditional three-movement concerto, it has four movements, not for length and weight but for diversity and contrast.
La Mer
Part symphony and part tone poem, Debussy’s innovative La Mer is one of the most influential pieces of the 20th century and has been as an audience favorite for more than a hundred years. La Mer was premiered in 1905 and the BSO gave the American premiere in March 1907.
Romanian Rhapsody No. 1
George Enescu composed his enormously popular Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 when he was just 19 years old, drawing on his prodigious musical memory to create a sparkling orchestral medley of traditional Romanian folksongs he had heard and played as a child.
