In Monday’s (8/29) New York Times, Anthony Tommasini writes, “You would not have guessed that it was the eve of Hurricane Irene weekend from the placid scene at Lincoln Center on Friday night. The weather was humid but mild; there were people buying gelato, tourists taking photos of the plaza and music lovers heading into Avery Fisher Hall for what was supposed to have been the next-to-last performance of this summer’s Mostly Mozart Festival, with Louis Langrée, the festival’s music director, conducting the festival orchestra in works by Stravinsky, Schubert and Mozart. Earlier on Friday the announcement had come that the final performance, on Saturday night (a repeat of Friday’s program), had been canceled in anticipation of the storm and the shutdown of the public transit system. But the mood inside the hall was unusually festive. Who could have anticipated how apt the theme of Friday night’s program, an exploration of unfinished works, would be? This slightly unfinished festival ended with performances of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony and Mozart’s unfinished Requiem (in the familiar version completed by Mozart’s student Franz Xaver Süssmayr).” Saturday (8/27) on the Boston Globe blog Culture Desk, Thomasine Berg reported that Sunday’s “final concert of the 2011 Tanglewood season has been called off, due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Irene on Sunday, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced today. The cancellation of the 2:30 pm BSO performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the festival’s traditional season finale, extends to all other Tanglewood activities scheduled for Sunday, including One Day University. It’s the first time a concert has been canceled in the BSO’s 75-year history at Tanglewood, according to the orchestra’s announcement.”
Posted August 29, 2011
