Tanglewood — 2011/08/05-07

Here's how the BSO website describe's this weekend's offerings at Tanglewood.

Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Strauss 

Friday, August 5, 8:30PM

Spanish conductor and longtime, beloved Tanglewood guest Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos takes the podium on August 5 for a BSO program featuring the young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang, who makes her Tanglewood debut in Rachmaninoff’s perennial audience favorite Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a virtuosic set of 24 variations for piano and orchestra on the final and most famous of Paganini’s 24 dazzling caprices for solo violin. Also on the program are Beethoven’s boisterous Symphony No. 8—which the composer considered superior to the more popular and more “serious” Symphony No. 7—and a suite from Richard Strauss’s opulent and romantic operatic comedy Der Rosenkavalier, which tells a traditional theatrical tale of impulsive young love pitted against a previously arranged marriage. 

Jalbert, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff 
Saturday, August 6, 8:30PM

On August 6, renowned violinist Sarah Chang joins the BSO for Mendelssohn’s sparkling Violin Concerto, the composer’s last full-scale orchestral work and a staple of the repertoire. Completed in 1845, the concerto is familiar and traditional to modern ears, but its solo-violin opening and three movements that all flow together without pause were very unusual for their time. The program also includes Rachmaninoff’s sweeping Symphony No. 2 and American composer Pierre Jalbert’s sparklingly orchestrated Music of air and fire, which premiered in California in 2007. Sean Newhouse, one of the BSO’s Assistant Conductors, will lead the orchestra for the first time at Tanglewood. 

Smetana, Mozart and Tchaikovsky 
Sunday, August 7, 2:30PM

The BSO’s weekend comes to a close August 7 with one of the world’s foremost concert pianists, Emanuel Ax, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat, K.482, written in Vienna in 1785 when the young composer was writing many new concertos for performances featuring himself as soloist. Lionel Bringuier, an Assistant Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra who makes his BSO and Tanglewood debuts in this program, also will conduct Tchaikovsky’s iconic Symphony No. 5 and Smetana’s The Moldau, a musical portrait of a river from the composer’s iconic work of musical nationalism, Má Vlast.

As always, you can listen via WCRB's webstream, with pre-concert interviews comments and related music beginning 1 1/2 hours before the scheduled concert.