“After an opening weekend with just a single Boston Symphony Orchestra performance, the festival’s second weekend was a shift into higher gear, with three engaging concerts that, (…) Friday’s performance did so largely through the sensitive leadership of conductor Stéphane Denève, (…)
But the evening’s real centerpiece was Saint-Saens’s popular “Organ Symphony,” which, after some initial rough edges, settled into an organically shaped and wonderfully atmospheric account led be Denève. The conductor seemed to lavish extra care on the work’s slow movement, drawing out long singing lines and an uncommon warmth of tone from the woodwinds and strings. The finale was rousing, with orchestra and organ conjuring a massive wall of sound. Barber’s famed Adagio for Strings opened the concert in a thoughtful pairing with Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, String Orchestra, and Timpani.”
Under clear skies, Tanglewood shifts into higher gear
