An augmented at-a-glance look at the Tanglewood schedule for July 24 – 30, 2009 plus introductory notes on the program for the following week.
Tanglewood schedule July 24 – Berlioz and Mussorgsky
- Friday, July 24, at 8:30 p.m. in the Shed
- James Levine conducting
- with violist Steven Ansell
- Berlioz – Harold in Italy
- Berlioz – Roman Carnival Overture
- Mussorgsky – Prelude to the opera Khovanshchina
- Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition
Tanglewood schedule July 25 – Brahms
- Saturday, July 25, at 8:30 p.m. in the Shed
- Brahms – A German Requiem
- James Levine conducting
- baritone Matthias Goerne
- Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver, conductor
Tanglewood schedule July 26 – All-American program
- Sunday, July 26, at 2:30 p.m. in the Shed
- conductor David Robertson
- baritone Thomas Hampson
- pianist Orli Shaham
- Thomson’s Five Songs from William Blake
- Barber’s Songs with Orchestra
- Harris’s Symphony No. 3
- Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety
Tanglewood schedule July 26 & 27 – Mozart’s Don Giovanni (fully staged)
- Sunday and Monday, July 26 & 27, at 7:30 p.m. in the Theatre
- conductor James Levine
- Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows and Orchestra
- Tanglewood Festival Chorus
- directed by Ira Siff
- sung in Italian with English supertitles
- third performance on July 29, at 7:30 p.m., in the Theatre, will be led by a Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellow Christoph Altstaedt
Tanglewood schedule July 28 – Tanglewood on Parade
Tanglewood on Parade, one of the festivals’ most beloved traditions, is a day of music festivities and family activities throughout the Tanglewood grounds, with activities beginning at 2 p.m. and culminating in an 8:30 p.m. concert in the Shed. The evening program will bring together the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and the Boston Pops, under the direction of James Levine, Keith Lockhart, John Williams, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, and Leonard Slatkin. The program will include music by Rossini, Enescu, and Copland, as well as John Williams’s Tributes: For Seiji and a TMCO performance of the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. The evening’s grand finale is a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture followed by a dazzling fireworks display.
Tanglewood schedule July 30 – Sir James Galway
This Week at Tanglewood – free discussion
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is proud to offer for the second year its successful “This Week at Tanglewood” series, a free Friday-evening panel discussion series to take place at 7:15 p.m. prior to each Friday evening’s BSO performance. On Friday July 24, host Martin Bookspan’s guests will include baritone Thomas Hampson. Each week the program will feature special guests in informal and engaging discussions and an overview of the coming week’s schedule, including everything from BSO performances to Tanglewood Music Center concerts to children’s programming. Attendance to “This Week at Tanglewood” is free and open to all ticket holders for the Friday evening BSO concerts.
free prelude concerts in Ozawa Hall
In addition, the Boston Symphony Orchestra offers free prelude concerts in Ozawa Hall before Friday and Saturday Shed concerts. Friday night, July 24 at 6 p.m., guest pianist Orli Shaham joins BSO clarinetist William R. Hudgins, violist Michael Zaretsky and cellist Alexandre Lecarme for a program of Bruch’s Eight Pieces for clarinet, viola and piano, and Beethoven’s Duo in E-flat for viola and cello “with two obbligato eyeglasses,” an early work reportedly subtitled by the composer to humorously reflect the poor eyesight of the amateur cellist for whom it was written. The TMC Prelude for Saturday, July 25, features TMC Fellows in the music of Britten, Henze, and Perle. Throughout the summer, the Friday night Prelude Concerts will feature members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing various chamber works, and the Saturday night concerts will feature Tanglewood Music Center Fellows. Each Prelude Concert is free and open to all ticket holders for the evening’s Shed concert.
Tanglewood schedule July 31 – August 6, 2009
Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, celebrating his landmark 75th birthday, returns for two programs. He leads the BSO in two French masterpieces, Debussy’s La Mer and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2, on a program with the Beethoven Violin Concerto performed by Vadim Repin (July 31). An ardent proponent of the music of Stravinsky, he conducts the Tanglewood Music Center Vocal and Conducting Fellows and Orchestra in a program of the composer’s complete Pulcinella, and the suite from the 1919 version of The Firebird (Aug. 3). The program will also feature Peter Serkin performing Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds, under the direction of a Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellow. Sir James Galway celebrates his 70th birthday with a musical bash led by Leonard Slatkin, featuring the BSO and special surprise guests. Repertoire includes Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, the overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and the Flute Concerto No. 2 (August 1). Former BSO assistant conductor Thomas Dausgaard returns August 2 for the first time since 1995 to conduct The Serge and Olga Koussevitsky Memorial Concert, featuring Rachmaninoff’s sweeping Symphony No. 2 and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, with the dynamic young Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. The Mark Morris Dance Group brings a program including two world premieres to Tanglewood August 5 and 6, featuring live music performed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Colin Jacobsen, and Tanglewood Music Center Fellows.
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