The Berkshire Eagle
“TANGLEWOOD REVIEW: Conducting Fellow
Agata Zajac leads the Tanglewood Music
Center Orchestra in a 'superb
performance' of Rachmaninoff’s 'Isle of
the Dead' (…) Conducting Fellow Agata
Zając, 28, is a Polish symphonic and
opera conductor, who has a considerable
amount of experience behind her and has
already been appointed assistant
conductor to the Barcelona Symphony
Orchestra for the coming season. She led
a superb performance of Rachmaninoff’s
“Isle of the Dead,” a very beautiful
“tone poem” from 1909, when Rachmaninoff
was living in Dresden and before he
moved permanently to the United States.
The piece is rarely performed, but it is
exquisitely written for color and
atmosphere. (…) The conductor and the
orchestra were as one, from the opening
swaying irregular rhythms to the
enormous climaxes. The brass and
percussion sections together created
powerful cascades of balanced sound
without blaring. It would be hard to
imagine a more persuasive or compelling
reading.”
Jeremy Yudkin (the professor of music at
Boston University)