The Tanglewood schedule for August 14-20, 2009, week seven of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2009 Tanglewood season, features Michael Tilson Thomas, Andre Previn, and Kurt Masur, three guest conductors with significant ties to Tanglewood.
Recent Tanglewood reviews/videos:
- Sir James Galway at Tanglewood – 70th birthday celebration
- Brahms’ A German Requiem at Tanglewood July 28th, 2009
- video: Stroll around Tanglewood before Diana Krall’s July 4 concert
- Tanglewood 2009 season opens with Tchaikovsky July 4th, 2009
- A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood June 29th, 2009
- video: Arlo Guthrie plays City of New Orleans and duets w/ Garrison Keillor on Deep Blue Sea
- video: Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers play The Orange Blossom Special
Tanglewood Music Center alumnus Michael Tilson Thomas, who was a protege of Leonard Bernstein, returns to the Tanglewood festival for the first time since 1988. His first program, August 14, initiates a weekend highlighted by three great Romantic piano concertos, as he conducts Rachmaninoff’s tempestuous Piano Concerto No. 3, performed by Yefim Bronfman, on a program with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.
Tilson Thomas’ second program is a project especially dear to his heart. The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theatre is a musical homage to his grandparents, who were leading performers in Yiddish theater in the ’20s and ’30s (Aug. 19 and 20). This lively Ozawa Hall program is scripted and narrated by Tilson Thomas, who also plays piano and conducts. It features the original performers who helped with the show’s creation in 2005: Judy Blazer, Neal Benari, Ronit Widmann-Levy, and Eugene Brancoveanu, all making their Tanglewood debuts. Pat Birch directs.
Frequent Tanglewood guest Andre Previn returns August 15 to collaborate with one of his favorite soloists, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, in Liszt’s poetic Piano Concerto No. 2, on a program with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 and Ravel’s La Valse. Previn goes back to his early jazz piano roots with a special evening of standards in Ozawa Hall on August 16 in a concert with longtime collaborator bassist David Finck.
Kurt Masur takes the podium Sunday afternoon August 16 to lead the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in an all-Brahms program focusing on music that is at the very heart of his repertoire: the Brahms Symphony No. 2 and the Piano Concerto No. 2, with Garrick Ohlsson as soloist.
August 21-23, 2009 Tanglewood schedule
The schedule for the final week of the 2009 Tanglewood season will include Kurt Masur on August 21 conducting the BSO on a program with Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 and the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 in C, with pianist David Fray, making his BSO debut.
The following night features Masur leading Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, Italian, The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave) Overture, and the Violin Concerto, with violinist Gil Shaham.
The final program of the BSO’s 2009 Tanglewood season will be the annual performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, with conductor and Tanglewood Music Center alumnus Michael Tilson Thomas, with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, soprano Erin Wall and mezzo-soprano Kendall Gladen in their BSO debuts, tenor Stuart Skelton in his Tanglewood debut, and bass-baritone Raymond Aceto on Aug. 23. The program begins with a movement from Charles Ives’s Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day, for chorus and orchestra (from his Holiday Symphony).
