Tanglewood Season Opens July 9
Michael Tilson Thomas Conducts Mahler's Resurrection
By: Ariel Petrova - Jul 06, 2010
The Boston Symphony Orchestra opens its 2010 Tanglewood season on Friday, July 9, with Michael Tilson Thomas leading the orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” at 8:30 p.m. in the Koussevitzky Music Shed. The opening night program is part of a season-long celebration of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO’s prestigious summer music academy for young musicians. To mark this anniversary, the opening night program will feature three former TMC Fellows: conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (TMC Fellow 1968 and 69), soprano Layla Claire (2007 and 2009), and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe (1993). The program will also feature the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this summer. The evening includes a special gala opening night pre-concert benefactor party (5 – 8 p.m)
Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937, located in the Berkshire Hills of Lenox, MA, opened with A Prairie Home Companion on June 26 and closes with the Labor Day Weekend Jazz Festival on September 5. Founded in 1940 by legendary BSO music director Serge Koussevitzky, the Tanglewood Music Center was created to provide young musicians with a premier academy for advanced study using the vast resources of the orchestra and visiting guest artists. As part of the 70th anniversary celebration of the TMC, Tanglewood will feature TMC alumni throughout the summer's concerts, including performers Stefan Asbury, Stephanie Blythe, Layla Claire, Christoph von Dohnányi, Charles Dutoit, Marcus Haddock, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Oliver Knussen, Ludovic Morlot, Dawn Upshaw, David Zinman, and BSO musicians Elizabeth Rowe and Thomas Martin, and composers Michael Gandolfi, Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, and Oliver Knussen,
For further information, including a wide variety of special ticket offers and a list of family events and activities for children, visit www.tanglewood.org
2010 TANGLEWOOD SEASON HIGHLIGHTS
The BSO’s portion of the 2010 Tanglewood season opens on July 9 and closes on August 29, with its annual performance Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, presenting a total of 22 programs on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons throughout the summer. Orchestra program highlights include an all-Beethoven concert, July 19; Mozart’s Requiem , July 16; Mahler’s Symphony No., July 17; an all-Brahms concert, July 24; Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, July 30; Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with soproano Hei-Kyung Hong, July 31; Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Yo-Yo Ma, August 1; Gershwin’s An American in Paris on a program with the composer’s Piano Concerto with soloist Jean-Ives Thibaudet, August 15; music of Golijov and Canteloube featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw, August 20; music of Mendelssohn and Beethoven performed by violinist Joshua Bell, August 21; and Holst’s The Planets, August 27. Two opera performances, a BSO concert performance of Mozarts The Abduction from Seraglio on July 23 and a fully staged TMC production of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos on August 1, 2, and 4 are also highlights.
Film Night with the Boston Pops and John Williams takes place on August 14. The Tanglewood premiere of The Dream Lives: A Tribute to the Kennedy Brothers with narrator Alec Baldwin on a Boston Pops program with folk icon Arlo Guthrie, under the direction of Keith Lockart, takes place on July 18. Tanglewood on Parade (August 3), a full day of musical activities culminating in a gala orchestra concert, led by Keith Lockhart, John Williams, and Stefan Asbury, celebrating John Williams’s 30th anniversary season at Tanglewood takes place on August 3. Herbie Hancock on August 9, and Crosby, Stills and Nash on September 1 are additional highlights. The 2010 Festival of Contemporary Music, August 12-16, is also among the season highlights. In addition, the 2010 Tanglewood schedule features a series of chamber music and recital programs in Ozawa Hall, highlighted this year by a special appearance by Audra McDonald on July 18, a program featuring Bach’s Complete Suites for solo cello with Pieter Wispelwey on July 22, and two all-Chopin programs for solo piano with Garrick Ohlssohn on August 24 and 26.
FRIDAY, JULY 16, 8:30 P.M., SHED – BSO, MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS, AND TANGLEWOOD FESTIVAL CHORUS IN MOZART AND STRAVINSKY
In a repeat performance of one of the most popular concerts in last fall’s Symphony Hall subscription series, the BSO, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas˚ present Mozart’s glorious Requiem and Stravinsky’s neoclassical Symphony of Psalms. The Symphony of Psalms, completed in 1930, was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Written about 140 years earlier, Mozart’s Requiem dates from the last year of Mozart’s life and was left incomplete when the composer died. Michael Tilson Thomas is the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony and Founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony.
SATURDAY, JULY 17, AT 8:30 P.M., SHED – TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA, LED BY TILSON THOMAS, EXPLORE MAHLER’S THIRD
Maestro Tilson Thomas leads the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in its first Shed performance of the season, joined by the Women of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the American Boychoir, Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, music director, and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill. In addition to the massive forces required, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 stretches to approximately 100 minutes, making it the longest piece in the standard orchestral repertoire.
SUNDAY, JULY 18, 2:30 P.M., SHED – KEITH LOCKHART AND BOSTON POPS WITH ALEC BALDWIN AND ARLO GUTHRIE
Currently in its 125th anniversary season, the Boston Pops and conductor Keith Lockhart, along with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver˚, conductor, welcome renowned folk musician Arlo Guthrie and Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin. Alec Baldwin joins the orchestra and chorus to narrate The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers, by composer Peter Boyer and Tony Award-winning lyricist Lynn Ahrens. This new multi-media work, commissioned for the Pops, combines quotes from speeches by the Kennedy brothers with original text and video, accompanied by a dramatic orchestral score. Arlo Guthrie will join the Pops for a set that includes favorites like "This Land Is Your Land," "Coming into L.A.," and "City of New Orleans." The world premiere performance of The Dream Lives On took place at Symphony Hall on May 18 and 19 with actors Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Cherry Jones narrating. On July 4, the Boston Pops released a recording of the world premiere performances of The Dream Lives On, available for purchase as a CD on www.bostonpops.org/shop, and at the Symphony Shop in Boston and Glass Houses at Tanglewood. The album is also available for download as a complete CD amazon.comwww.bostonpops.org/digital
SUNDAY, JULY 18, 8 P.M., OZAWA HALL – AUDRA MCDONALD REVISITS AND REINVENTS THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK
Sunday night at 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall, beloved singer/actress Audra McDonald, accompanied by pianist Ted Sperling, makes her Ozawa Hall debut in “A New American Songbook,” a recital offering an eclectic mix of standard favorites and songs written expressly for her by today’s finest musical theater composers. Ms. McDonald, who currently stars in the television series Private Practice, seamlessly blends musical genres and has won four Tony Awards and two Grammy Awards.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 8 P.M., OZAWA HALL – TROUBADOR BENJAMIN BAGBY IN BEOWULF
In one of the season’s more unusual performances, harpist, vocalist, and medievalist Benjamin Bagby draws us back into the world of tribal society and Nordic legend, recreating in concert the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, the oldest extant complete poem in English. Mr. Bagby, through song, speech, and playing his six-string harp, relates in Old English (with modern English supertitles) the story of the chieftain Beowulf, who defeats the monster Grendel in battle.
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 8 P.M., OZAWA HALL – CELLIST PIETER WISPELWEY OFFERS A FEAST OF BACH
Bach’s Suites for solo cello, popularized in the first quarter of the 20th century by the legendary Pablo Casals, are the pinnacles of the solo repertoire for the instrument. At 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall, Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey offers a rare opportunity to hear all six suites in a single night, giving an extended-performance concert with two intermissions.
COMING UP NEXT WEEK…
In the third weekend of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season, the orchestra performs three concerts focusing on the work of German-Austrian composers. Johannes Debus, Music Director of the Canadian Opera Company, makes his BSO conducing debut leading the orchestra in a concert performance of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio on July 23, featuring Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows and a professional cast that includes sopranos Lisette Oropesa and Ashley Emerson and bass Morris Robinson. On July 25, Hans Graf will lead the BSO in a showcase, in the great Viennese tradition, of marches, waltzes, and polkas by Johann Strauss II in a matinee program anchored by a performance of Don Quixote by Richard Strauss, featuring cellist Lynn Harrell and BSO principal violist Steven Ansell as soloists, and including the Radeztky March by Johann Strauss I. On July 24, the BSO performs an all-Brahms program that features the composer’s Symphony No. 2 and the Piano Concerto No. 1, with soloist Peter Serkin. The Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra continues its performance season Sunday night with a concert including youthful works by Mendelssohn and conductor Herbert Blomstedt leading the TMCO in Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.