Tanglewood — 2019/08/16-18

Friday evening's concert will not be broadcast. It's "Star Wars: A New Hope" with the Boston Pops playing the score while the movie is being shown. Whether for copyright reasons or because they think it just wouldn't work without the visual, WCRB will give us instead an "encore broadcast" from the 2018 Tanglewood season.


Friday, August 16, 2019.   We can listen to the concert of Friday , July 27, 2018. As the performance detail page told us back then:

Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena leads the BSO in a program that begins with the Four Sea Interludes from Britten's opera Peter Grimes, a work of particular significance to Bernstein, who conducted the first American performances of the opera at Tanglewood in 1946 and also led the Four Sea Interludes to open the last concert he ever conducted, on August 19, 1990 in the Shed. Following the Britten, Garrick Ohlsson joins the orchestra as soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat, K.271, and the concert concludes with Brahms's marvelously energetic and compact Symphony No. 3.

(Some emphasis added.)
As you'll recall, in 2018 they were celebrating the centennial of Bernstein's birth.


Saturday, August 17, 2019.  See the performhttps://www.classicalwcrb.org/#stream/0ance detail page for the usual links. Here's the rushed synopsis:

François-Xavier Roth makes his Tanglewood debut conducting joining pianist Kirill Gerstein for Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 on a program with Schumann’s Symphony No. 2.

(Emphasis added.)

Maestro Roth has conducted the BSO enough that it came as a surprise to read that this is his Tanglewood debut.

Unfortunately for me, the Schumann comes during my brother's call from Japan.


Sunday, August 18, 2019.  We get to enjoy more Schumann and Brahms under the baton of Maestro Roth on Sunday. See the performance detail page, which provides this tidbit:

François-Xavier Roth is joined by Yo-Yo Ma for Schumann’s Cello Concerto, on a program with Brahms’s Serenade No. 1 and Schumann’s Concert Piece for four horns and orchestra, featuring members of the BSO horn section.

(Emphasis added.)

I'm especially looking forward to this one. The horn piece should be fun, and I actually like Brahm's serenades, which I wasn't aware of until James Levine led a performance of the delightful Serenade No. 2 in Symphony Hall a number of years back.


Don't forget, WCRB transmits the Friday and Saturday concerts at 8:00 p.m. EDST, and the Sunday at 7:00. See their website for the link to listen over the internet and for other material.