Tanglewood — 2011/08/26-28 — Season Finale

The BSO website informs us:

Final Weekend of BSO Concerts at Tanglewood! 

Gerswhin's Porgy and Bess 
Friday, August 26, 8:30PM

The BSO begins its final weekend of the 2011 Tanglewood season Friday, August 26, with its first-ever  performance of George Gershwin’s great American masterpiece, the blues-and-jazz-inflected Porgy and Bess, which examines African-American life in the South during the 1920s. Described by the composer as an “American folk opera,” Porgy and Bess premiered on Broadway in 1935. Three-quarters of a century later, the work has assumed its rightful place among the greatest of America’s music, and its songs are sung all over the world. 

All-Beethoven Program 
Saturday, August 27, 8:30PM

The great Itzhak Perlman joins the orchestra August 27 for an all-Beethoven program that demonstrates his talents as both violinist and conductor. Mr. Perlman will act as soloist and leader for the Romances Nos. 1 and 2 for violin and orchestra, two relatively brief early-period works (written 1798–1802) that possess an understated elegance and foreshadow Beethoven’s great Violin Concerto, which would follow a few years later. Mr. Perlman then trades his fiddle for a baton and conducts the composer’s First and Fifth symphonies. 

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 
Sunday, August 28, 2:30PM

On August 28, the Boston Symphony Orchestra brings its portion of the 2011 Tanglewood season to a close with the traditional season-ending performance of Beethoven’s transcendent Symphony No. 9. Eminent maestro Lorin Maazel presides over this year’s final evening and is joined by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, soprano Joyce El-Khoury (BSO and Tanglewood debut), mezzo-soprano Margaret Gawrysiak (BSO and Tanglewood debut), tenor Garrett Sorenson, and bass-baritone Eric Owens (Tanglewood debut). The all-encompassing Ninth Symphony is not only one of the greatest and most well-known works ever, but also is a rare example of music that leaves behind the time in which it was written and heralds the arrival of a new era.

Further info is available both on the website of WCRB (which streams the concerts, with pre-concert coverage beginning 1 1/2 hours before each concert) and on the BSO's own website. Here's a link to the WCRB page which includes interviews with performers scheduled for Friday and Saturday evenings and with BSO General Manager Mark Volpe. The BSO's page for Friday evening lists cast and conductor. The Saturday page has links to notes and audio for the symphonies, and the page for the Sunday concert lists soloists, conductor and chorus, with links to notes and audio. The BSO pages also give info about broadcasts on other stations as well as WCRB, so if you're in range for any of the broadcast stations you can listen there, as well.

"But just a minute," you say, "what about the hurricane which is expected to be around?" Well, a little while ago the announcers on WCRB said that as of then, all systems were "go" for all three concerts as far as the BSO was concerned. They pointed out that never in the 74 years of concerts at Tanglewood has a concert been cancelled because of weather.