Tanglewood

On Wednesday the German born violin virtuoso, Anne-Sophie Mutter, performed in Ozawa Hall accompanied by pianist Lambert Orkis. On Friday she led a baroque orchestra in an all Mozart program. Tonight, she will be a guest among many participating in the Gala 75th Anniversary concert. She has also met with students in the Tanglewood summer program. It was her first Berkshire visit since 1992.

In one of the best ever Pops programs Keith Lockhart paid tribute to New York composers. Including the Washington D. C. born jazz great Duke Ellington's A Tone Parallel to Harlem. For the second half of the concert he was joined by Broadway legend Bernadette Peters. She performed a number of songs by Stephen Sondheim including two from Follies which she performed this season on Broadway. Awesome.

It was steamy in the Shed last night for the sweltering launch of the gala, 2012, 75th season of Tanglewood. With Christoph von Dohnányi, a Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1952, the orchestra replicated the very first BSO concert that took place on August 5, 1937. A capacity audience enjoyed the all-Beethoven program, opening with the Leonore Overture No. 3, followed by Symphony No. 6, Pastoral, and Symphony No. 5.

Last night James Taylor performed the first of three annual sold out shows at Tanglewood. With a twenty minute intermission the program started just after seven and ended just before ten. During all that time guest artist Taylor Swift graced us with two duets and a solo of her teen anthem, a thrill to thousands of girls in the audience “Love Story.” More tonight.

As part of the celebrations for its 35th Season, Shakespeare & Company is pleased to introduce a series of presentations and events tailored to its summer performance season. Engaging discussions, riveting talks, and insightful Q&A’s will all be featured in the Company’s packed calendar of special events. For more information on all of Shakespeare & Company’s special 35th Season offerings, including Founders’ Talks, Author! Author!, Tuesday Talks, Wednesday Q&A’s, Behind the Scenes Tours, and other special events.

On Thursday, June 28 the Williamstown Theatre Festival launches its season with the opening night of two shows. Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" directed by David Hyde Pierce with Tyne Daly is on the Main Stage. The more intimate Nikos Stage will feature the world premiere of The Deep Blue directed by Bob Balaban with Becky Ann Baker and a return to Williamstown after a long absence of a perennial favorite, Blythe Danner. Yesterday WTF artistic director Jenny Gersten hosted a meet an greet with the directors and their stars.

The color and force of two monuments of twentieth century choral music were performed with drama and grand production by the New York Philharmonic, Orfeon Pamplones and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

Train is back on track for Friday, August 31. Followed by Pops, on Saturday, and then a hard rock tandem of Evanescence and Chevelle rounding out a solid Labor Day Weekend in the Shed. This is a dramatic change of policy for Tanglewood making for a weekend with broad audience appeal second only to the Fourth of July. This last blast of summer will surely draw large audiences to Lenox. Then its back to work and school.

The musical centerpiece of the evening will be the Tanglewood 75th Celebration Concert featuring performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, as well as the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, led by conductors John Williams, Keith Lockhart, and Andris Nelsons. These legendary Tanglewood ensembles will be joined on stage by several of today’s leading artists, including violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianists Emanuel Ax and Peter Serkin, and vocalist James Taylor.

While not exactly an overhaul, Mark Volpe appears to be tweaking the programming at Tanglewood. Sticking with the mantra of Tanglewood as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra means facing the reality or an eroding, senior audience. The annual season ending Tanglewood Jazz Festival has been scrapped replaced by booking A list jazz artists Wynton Marsalis and Christain McBride in Ozawa Hall and Pops in the Shed for a boldy revamped Labor Day weekend. And that's not all.

Tanglewood, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this season, June 22-September 2, is offering a number of ticket programs designed to give visitors and Berkshire residents a wide variety of options when planning their visit to the BSO’s summer home. Kripalu and the Clark Art Institute are each teaming up with the BSO this summer to offer three new ticket deals showcasing a variety of different Berkshire summer attractions.

PBS announced today that the Tanglewood 75th anniversary gala concert, featuring many of the iconic artists identified with the fete, has been added to the line-up of the PBS Arts Summer Festival and will air nationally on Friday, August 10 at 9 p.m. ET as part of GREAT PERFORMANCES.

Numerous unique events in Boston this week. Maestro Bernard Haitink leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s warm and ever-popular Pastoral Symphony. Handel and Hayden presents the memorable Mozart Coronation. The Celebrity Series showcases at Jordan Hall: Emerson String Quartet, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra ends its season with Mahler Triumphant! ArtsEmerson presents Hershey Felder in Maestro: Leonard Bernstein while The Luck of the Irish final weeks continue at the Huntington Theatre. The Institute of Contemporary Art presents the 49th Ann Arbor Film Festival of animation and technical innovation.

Victoria Bond makes a case for the accessibility of contemporary music as the Great Noise Ensemble interprets. Her delightful short chamber piece, Coqui, concluded the first part of the program.

A flurry of activities in both Boston and Cambridge this week. Do not miss the Elliot Norton laureate William Kentridge will present his animated films at the Harvard Archives. The Jewish film festival promises a variety of special movies. Maestro Bernard Haitink will conduct at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Institute of Contemporary Art & World Music/CRASHARTS showcases the unforgettable India Jazz Suites: Kathak Meets Tap.

Brahms composed The German Requiem, “Ein Deutsches Requiem,” at a time of bereavement and personal, piercing associations. The plunge in the Rhine of his mentor and spiritual father, Robert Shumann, as well as the death of his mother, Christiane, who died before he could reach her, are the inspiration for this memorial piece. “Ein Deutsches Requiem” is not a generic requiem; it differs from the standard, as it is neither a mass nor oratorio, and nowhere in the libretto is there a reference to the son of God. The score is composed of seven movements that use German texts from the Old Testament, New Testament and Apocrypha. The libretto is selected to spread blessings, rather than sadness and despair, to the living and to the dead.

The Mount will kick-start its 2012 season with two programs planned for late April. On Saturday, April 21 at 3:00 PM, Berkshire resident, Wharton scholar and Professor of English, Hildegard Hoeller will give a informative talk on Edith Wharton and her changing views of New York, entitled Edith Wharton: Old and New New York. On Sunday, April 22, The Mount will present Music in the Drawing Room with an afternoon performance by Elizabeth Morse, principle harpist of the Berkshire Symphony.

The cabaret beckons at Ozawa Hall Saturday, June 2, 6 pm as Close Encounters With Music ushers in the summer season in the Berkshires. In a performance that evokes the twenties of the last century—a time exemplified by Art Deco, Prohibition, the loosening of social restraints, Jazz, the Charleston and flappers—“Roaring Twenties” offers a panorama of composers and styles that defined and shaped the era: Gershwin, Kurt Weill, Alexander Zemlinsky, Hanns Eisler, Cole Porter, Poulenc, Schoenberg, and Erwin Schulhoff provide a bi-continental glimpse into a decade that still looms colorful, mythical and seductive in cultural history.

The Boston Pops 2012 season under the direction of Keith Lockhart, opens in style on May 9 with Broadway sensation Bernadette Peters performing many of the signature songs that have made her one of this country’s legendary stars of the stage and screen. The Boston Pops 2012 unifying theme, Visions of America, inspires a season dedicated to celebrating many of this country’s greatest musical traditions, culminating in a multimedia “Visions of America Photo Symphony” program to end the season on June 14, 15, and 16. These special concerts will feature R&B sensation Patti Austin, jazz vocalist Steve Tyrell, photographs by Joseph Sohm, music by Roger Kellaway, and lyrics by the unrivaled team of Alan and Marilyn Bergman, with a recorded narration provided by Clint Eastwood.

The recently released CD Blue Moon is being hailed by critics as among the best of a recording career that started in 1955. With an amazing rhythm section of Herlin Riley, drums, Manolo Badrena, percussion, and Reginald Veal, bass the iconic jazz pianist performed at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield. They are about to embark for Italy to launch a European tour in support of the critically acclaimed new album.

Ed Pincus films at the Harvard Archives while the Turkish film festival continues at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The American Repertory Theater showcases Futurity: A Musical by the Lisps and the Boston Symphony Orchestra presents Brahms: A German Requiem. Leon Kirchner’s opera, Lily (a musical adaptation of Saul Bellow’s novel Henderson, the Rain King) will be performed at the New England Conservatory First Monday at Jordan Hall. Happy Passover and Happy Easter.

Aston Magna Music Festival (Daniel Stepner, Artistic Director) America’s oldest annual summer festival in America devoted to music performed on period instru­ments, celebrates its 40th Anniversary Season in the Berkshires. This summer’s concert series from June 8 through July 7 is devoted to music spanning from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

Thomas Hampson is committed to music, as a performer, a researcher, a promoter of all American music. The Metropolitan Opera Guild put on an evening honoring him, and his unique contributions to opera and music education.

A French program that looked at first like your usual fare was turned into an evening of fabulous music by the Symphony, many of its members soloists, an exciting conductor, and a brilliant young French pianist, Cedric Tiberghein.

With the Wilco Solid Sound Festival taking a hiatus and the Clark Art Institute in the midst of construction and renovation it may prove to be a challenging summer for Mass MoCA. We discussed with Thompson how best to continue to grow cultural tourism through synergy among the arts organizations of the Berkshires. In the past two years the 6,000 visitors for the Wilco weekends brought much needed revenue to the region. We need more such initiatives. This is the final chapter of the dialogue with Thompson.