Tanglewood 2021 Anna Rakitina conducts Langer Ravel and Elgar featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet pian

LENOX BSO Assistant Conductor Anna Rakitina made her long-awaited Tanglewood debut Saturday Aug. 14 leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a program of Langer Ravel and Elgar. Saturday August 14 2021 8pm BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ANNA RAKITINA conductor JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET piano PROGRAM Elena LANGER - Suite from Figaro Gets a Divorce RAVEL - Piano Concerto in G ELGAR - Variations on an original theme Op. 36 Enigma First on the program was the suite from an opera by Russian-British composer Elena Langer a Tanglewood Music Center alumna. If no one told you this music was from an opera you might nevertheless get the feeling that it exists to support dramatic scenes possibly gritty ones. Seedy even. But also antic. And youd be right on all counts. It is opera after all. The plot to David Pountneys libretto for Figaro Gets a Divorce is so convoluted that youd expect the music to be all over the place. And so it is sometimes more in the manner of cinema than opera. Langers score is bawdy audacious and so wildly colorful that sometimes it borders on the psychedelic. When was the last time you saw an accordionist sitting onstage with the BSO? In any case the crowd in the Koussevitzky Music Shed went along for the wild ride and strongly approved of the work. French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet must have received heavy prenatal exposure to Maurice Ravels Piano Concerto in G because now the piece seems to spill out of him effortlessly. He first appeared with the BSO three decades ago has performed Ravels concerto with the orchestra a dozen times and on this outing proved he still has chops to spare. Ravel composed his concerto for the sole purpose of giving pleasure to audiences and when performed at this level nearly a century later it still does the job reliably. Anna Rakitina likewise seems to have long ago devoured the score to a piece that put British composer Edward Elgar on the map toward the end of the nineteenth century. His Enigma Variations the Russian-born Rakitina now conducts from memory. Her command of the piece seems absolute her podium demeanor irresistibly persuasive.,

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