Remember the joke about Mrs. Astor on the Titanic? "I know I rang for water but this is ridiculous!" It doesn't dare rain on Beethoven in the Berkshires, especially on Sunday afternoon, let alone at the Serge and Olga Koussevitzky Memorial Concert. Till yesterday, that is, when Lenox intersections, usually congested at concert time, were eerily deserted, and forlorn picnic umbrellas on the Tanglewood lawn served as shields from rain that mucked up the sodden grounds.

Enough water! Listeners forced to change plans who turned on WAMC heard Thomas Dausgaard, a former Boston Symphony assistant conductor, lead Beethoven's Concerto No. 3, with Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, (click HERE) whose performances are original and well thought out.

Recordings of Andsnes have the body and clarity that skillful engineering can project, but Sunday, he showed that the skill was not the engineer's but his. He and Dausgaard took a condensed chamber approach to the concerto, a large piece full of bold announcements; Beethoven's markings for softness were taken seriously, creating sudden whispered suspense and room to expand to dramatic assertions. Dausgaard and the orchestra attended to details within each note.

Rain does surprising things to sound: in the front of the Koussevitzky Music Shed there was a peculiar illusion of distance, but with amplification the sound cut through the thick air to the rear of the Shed, where large screens above the boxes in the center gave listeners a close look at the players.