Tanglewood July 23-25, 2010

Here's what the BSO says on their Tanglewood page.


"Mozart, Brahms and Strauss!

Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio
Friday, July 23, 8:30PM

Canadian Opera Company Music Director Johannes Debus joins the BSO to conduct a concert performance of Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio, featuring Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows and a professional cast that includes sopranos Lisette Oropesa and Ashley Emerson, tenors Eric Cutler and Anthony Stevenson, and bass Morris Robinson. Acclaimed Boston actor Will LeBow will narrate. Though Mozart's opera, written in the style of the Singspiel, uses spoken dialogue rather than recitative to develop the plot, it also contains some of the composer's most brilliant and challenging sung numbers, full of coloratura passages and other vocal fireworks.

All-Brahms Program
Saturday, July 24, 8:30PM

Guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt takes to the Tanglewood podium at 8:30 p.m. in the Shed, leading an all-Brahms program that features the composer's Symphony No. 2 and the Piano Concerto No. 1, with soloist Gilles Vonsattel. The Piano Concerto No. 1, completed in 1858, was originally composed in 1854 as a sonata for two pianos and nearly became his first symphony before going through a number of revisions and finally arriving at its present state. Conversely, Brahms rapidly wrote his Symphony No. 2 in a single summer in 1877.
Regrettably, Peter Serkin is ill and has been forced to withdraw from this Saturday's performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1. We are delighted that the young Swiss-American pianist, Gilles Vonsattel, will be replacing him.



All-Strauss Program
Sunday, July 25, 2:30PM

Houston Symphony Music Director Hans Graf will lead the BSO in a showcase of waltzes and polkas in the great Viennese tradition 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. The music of Johann Strauss II was ubiquitous in Vienna for the majority of the 19th century and has never lost its popularity with the concertgoing masses. Richard Strauss, no relation, was an entirely different kind of composer, and his tone poem Don Quixote provides some heft among the Waltz King's effervescent dances."

Enjoy the stream on WCRB!