United States Tanglewood 2025 [3] – Brahms, R. Schumann, Tchaikovsky: Augustin Hadelich (violin), Boston Symphony Orchestra / Anna Handler (conductor). Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox, 16.8.2025. (ES-S)
Brahms – Tragic Overture, Op.81
R. Schumann – Symphony No.4 in D minor, Op.120
Tchaikovsky – Violin Concerto in D, Op.35
German-Colombian conductor Anna Handler, who was appointed assistant conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2024, made a memorable debut main the orchestra on Saturday at Tanglewood. A Juilliard graduate and former Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, she impressed in a program of Romantic works acquainted sufficient to audiences {that a} conductor feels challenged to supply recent views. This was barely a difficulty for Handler. She proved her mettle from the beginning, using a reduced-size orchestra all through the night – simply 4 double basses and 5 to 6 cellos. This alternative lent the performances a chamber-like readability and intimacy, and it allowed woodwinds and brass to emerge with uncommon vividness.
The live performance opened with Brahms’s Tragic Overture, its slashing introductory chords delivered with actual chunk and instantly setting a tone of urgency. Handler approached the rating not as a ceremonial curtain-raiser however as a tightly argued symphonic assertion, drawing consideration to its motivic economic system and stressed vitality. Somewhat than exaggerating its weight, she let shifting colours and dynamics hint a darkly dramatic narrative. Textures remained unusually clear. The Boston Symphony responded with full-bodied sonorities and sharp contrasts: the brass added flashes of metal with out overpowering, and the strings, pushed by nervous vitality, by no means turned heavy.
Brahms typically regarded to Robert Schumann in addition to to Beethoven as fashions in his personal symphonic writing. There’s a kinship between the Tragic Overture and Schumann’s Fourth Symphony – in the way in which coherence is woven out of economic system, binding drama to motivic logic – that Handler introduced ahead within the juxtaposition of the 2 scores.
The 1841 model of the symphony was criticized as episodic and, a decade later, Schumann reworked it into the 1851 model heard at Tanglewood – a rating the place themes return in remodeled guises and all 4 actions observe with out pause. Brahms admired this method, although he favored the leaner 1841 model and ensured its publication late in life, regardless of Clara Schumann’s objections.
Handler formed the symphony as a single, unbroken span, pacing transitions so that every motion appeared to develop naturally out of the earlier one, and bringing out Schumann’s idiosyncratic, unconventional sense of type – his tendency to make the acquainted seem unusual. She dealt with the temper shifts – much less abrupt than in Schumann’s piano music – akin to a sudden brass outburst within the first motion, with each sensitivity and precision. The Romanze, taken at a barely slower tempo than Schumann’s ziemlich langsam (pretty sluggish) indication would counsel, unfolded with heat, framed by a plaintive oboe–cello dialogue and centered on Alexander Velinzon’s delicately formed violin solo. The Scherzo snapped with rhythmic edge, its Trio providing distinction within the winds’ lighter timbres earlier than plunging again into the pressing principal part. Within the finale, burnished brass chorales and agile string figuration heightened the cumulative power of the motion’s music, propelling the work towards a blazing conclusion. The ensemble balanced weight with readability, and with the leaner forces that Handler employed, Schumann’s scoring – as soon as dismissed as overly dense – revealed a luminous structure.
After the intermission got here the principle draw for a lot of within the viewers: Augustin Hadelich in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. From his first notes, it was clear that this may not be a efficiency of bravura for its personal sake. The opening motion unfolded with a lyrical ease, Hadelich’s silvery tone and exact articulation turning even probably the most pyrotechnics-infused passages into sleek dialogues with the winds. His cadenza was unhurried but filled with inside drive, every double-stop and arpeggio carrying the music ahead reasonably than pausing for impact. Handler offered a supportive, well-calibrated orchestral backdrop – by no means intrusive and often attentive to the soloist’s rubato and dynamic shading.
The Canzonetta emerged with hushed intimacy, Hadelich’s phrasing gently supported by the muted strings’ dusky heat. The exchanges with Mark McEwen on clarinet and Elizabeth Klein on flute advised a restrained dialogue reasonably than operatic drama. In distinction, the Finale bristled with rhythmic vitality, its principal theme snapping with dance-like vitality, however Hadelich resisted the temptation to push the tempo into breathless territory. Even in his fleetest passages, the passagework gleamed with readability, and the Molto meno mosso supplied a quick oasis of lyricism earlier than the rousing shut.
For an encore, Hadelich performed his personal association of Howdy Forrester’s ‘Wild Fiddler’s Rag’, tossed off with sparkle and technical ingenuity. Touched with an unmistakable American accent, it offered a disarming distinction to Tchaikovsky and despatched the viewers out smiling.
General, Anna Handler’s debut made a powerful impression: a conductor with an ear for stability and structure, significantly adept at shaping the troublesome transitional passages in each Schumann and Tchaikovsky. Appointed Kapellmeister of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and persevering with her tenure with the Boston Symphony, she is within the early levels of a profession properly value following.
Edward Sava-Segal
Featured Picture: Anna Handler conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood © Hilary Scott
