The summer season began for this concert goer Sunday afternoon on a very high level in a very good place, Tannery Pond... There is no more comely place to gather for music; the acoustics are intimate, clear, and warm in this converted tannery...The concert began with an absolutely superb reading of Haydn's Trio in C Major (Hoboken XV:27). Everything was right here... Next, the remarkable young tenor Nicholas Phan addressed Faure's La Bonne Chanson... Mr. Phan is a singer's singer in every way... This was truly masterful singing... After the interval Mr. Phan continued with an equally idiomatic rendering of five of Benjamin Britten's folk song arrangements, exploiting all the variety and color Peter Pears himself might have reached for and then some. The final work was Schumann's great first piano trio in D Minor... This was as deeply satisfying a chamber concert as any I've heard. Mr. Steiner is to be warmly thanked for bringing this superb musicianship to such a beautiful location. What could possibly be missing here?
(For the complete review, see http://www.berkshirereview.net/music/tannerytrio.html)
-- Michael Miller, The Berkshire Review for the Arts, 28 May 2008
It was one of those rare days when the stars were perfectly aligned for first-class chamber music in an idyllic setting on a perfect spring day... Familiar, estimable piano trios by Haydn and Schumann, and less frequently-encountered song cycles by Fauré and Britten, made for a compelling program, especially in these performances marked by sensitivity, interpretive nuance and panache... The highly attentive audience of about 210 (no program-rustling or pin-dropping here) rewarded the performers with a well-deserved ovation... With resplendent acoustics in the restored, all-wood 19th-century Shaker tannery (later, a chapel) amid a bucolic scene that would have inspired Thomas Cole and other Hudson River School landscape painters, the Tannery Pond concerts are on a par with Pittsfield's South Mountain Concerts and Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall chamber-music recitals for high artistic merit in a salubrious setting.
(For the complete review, see http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_9411771)
-- Clarence Fanto, The Berkshire Eagle, 29 May 2008
Tannery Pond was the place to be when the concert series opened its season Saturday night with a freshly imagined and beautifully played program. Nine musicians…took the stage in an assortment of compositions that looked like a grab bag but would up making a long but satisfying meal…And an attractive gathering they were, all or most of them apparently on the comfortable side of 40, and all performing with style, spirit and skill. Some of the playing, as in the sugar-coated but seductive Saint Saens piece for piano and winds, was so finely attuned that it sounded as if the instruments – no, not the players – were making love. – Andrew L. Pincus, BERKSHIRE EAGLE, Tuesday, May 24, 2005
A Bucolic Setting Beckons: Virtuosos Perform Update
For Susan Graham, today’s leading American mezzo-soprano, and Ben Heppner, the reigning lyric heldentenor, the usual performance stops include Vienna, Salzburg, Berlin, Paris, London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and the few other international cities prestigious enough to warrant their lighting down for a day or two. Within the past couple of weeks, however, I heard them sing not in Covent Garden or on West 57th Street, but in the upstate hamlet of New Lebanon, in a 290-seat barn that until recently was home to a colony of bats. The concert hall was an old post-and-beam tannery, built by the Shakers in the 1830’s on what are now the grounds of the Darrow School…In two weekend concerts, two world-class artists gave unstintingly of themselves in an unexpected, bucolic setting. I count these among the most rewarding musical encounters of my life. – Charles Michener, The New York Observer, 6/9/2003.
Some people give champagne or flowers for an anniversary. The St. Lawrence String Quartet gave Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus’. There is nothing more beautiful on earth…The stunning floral arrangements were by Sue Nunley, the eminently readable program notes by Clair W. Van Ausdall. The distant hills were aflame with color. Tannery Pond is 10. – Andrew L. Pincus, The Berkshire Eagle, 10 October 2000.
