Tanglewood — 2012/07/20-22

Greetings, music lovers young and old, near and far. Another weekend arrives, and again we look to Tanglewood for three programs to be broadcast and streamed around the world from western Massachusetts by Classical New England.

July 20.  It's Berkshires Night at Tanglewood (1,000 free tickets have been made available to residents of the area), and there is a program of music by Bernstein and Tchaikovsky. Inexplicably, they aren't identifying the performers, either on the homepage or on the detail page, but they at least tell us what is scheduled to be performed.

BERNSTEIN - Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium) for violin and orchestra
TCHAIKOVSKY - Symphony No. 6, Pathétique

But Classical New England spills the beans.

Christoph Eschenbach conducts Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, the "Pathétique," and violinist Dan Zhu is the soloist in Bernstein's Serenade, live from Tanglewood.

Tonight at 7pm on Classical New England

I'm not familiar with the Bernstein Serenade, but having read the Symposium in college, I'd like to hear what he does with it. Unfortunately, I'll be out having dinner with the Race Committee, so I'll probably miss it.


July 21.  Saturday brings us an all Wagner program. Again, they don't tell us who's conducting this program, but the detail page does have a link to the program notes on the music.

ALL-WAGNER PROGRAM - 
Overture to Rienzi
Siegfried Idyll
Prelude and Love-death from Tristan und Isolde
Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre
Forest Murmurs from Siegfried
Prelude to Parsifal
Overture to Tannhäuser

Again, CNE is more forthcoming with information and links to their own preview material.

The BSO and conductor Asher Fisch re-create a 1937 Tanglewood program that's gone down in history./

Some of it is stuff I like, but I can do without the Liebestod. I don't quite recall the Parsifal  prelude, but in general, I can do without the opera. The Rienzi and Tannhäuser overtures, OTOH, are just my figurative cup of metaphorical tea.


July 22.  On Sunday afternoon we get an all Mozart program under the baton of Kurt Masur and his son Ken-David. Here the website is not afraid to give some details:

In yet another nod to history on Sunday, July 22, at 2:30 p.m., the BSO presents an all-Mozart program, a popular model in the early years of the festival, led by Kurt Masur (a Tanglewood guest more than 25 times), and his son, both conductor and grammy-nominated producer, Ken-David Masur, and featuring pianist Gerhard Oppitz in the Piano Concerto No. 24, among the very greatest and most dramatic of Mozart's works in the genre and one of just two in a minor key.

Also on the program are the Symphony No. 36, Linz-which bears the name of the Austrian city in which it was composed over a period of just four days in 1783-and one of Mozart's most enduringly popular works, Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

By now, you should know the drill: evening concerts at 8:30, Sunday afternoon at 2:30, all with introductory material beforehand.




I'll be in Europe  next week. If I get a chance, I'll put something about next weekend here before I go — maybe even try to  schedule it to publish while I'm gone. But if I don't get around to it, just check the BSO and Classical New England websites.