BSO — 2026/01/10

 This evening the BSO returns to Symphony Hall. Thwy open this part of the season with the first of a series of concerts with the heading "E Pluribus Unum," celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

 Here's how WCRB describes it: https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2026-01-10/samuel-barbers-vanessa-with-the-bso

Saturday, January 10, 2026
8:00 PM

To begin the Boston Symphony’s E Pluribus Unum, or From Many, One, a broad, multi-concert exploration of American music, Andris Nelsons leads the BSO in Samuel Barber’s hauntingly beautiful opera “Vanessa,” in collaboration with the Boston Lyric Opera. This is the BSO’s first full performance of the Pulitzer Prize-winning work, which The New York Times lauded as “the best American opera ever presented” when it premiered to 17 curtain calls at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Jennifer Holloway, soprano (Vanessa)
Samantha Hankey, mezzo-soprano (Erika)
Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano (The Old Baroness)
Ganson Salmon, tenor (Anatol)
Patrick Carfizzi, baritone (The Old Doctor)
Wei Wu, bass (Major Domo/Footman)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
Betsy Burleigh, guest choral conductor
Boston Lyric Opera Chorus
Brett Hodgdon, conductor

Samuel BARBER Vanessa

The BSO performance detail page puts it this way: https://www.bso.org/events/jan-8-10-barber-vanessa?performance=2026-01-10-20:00

Boston Symphony Orchestra Andris Nelsons, conductor Jennifer Holloway, soprano (Vanessa) Samantha Hankey, mezzo-soprano (Erika) Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano (The Old Baroness) Ganson Salmon, tenor (Anatol) Patrick Carfizzi, baritone (The Old Doctor) Wei Wu, bass (Major Domo/Footman) Alexandra Dietrich, staging coordinator Tanglewood Festival Chorus Betsy Burleigh, guest choral conductorBoston Lyric Opera ChorusBrett Hodgdon, conductorBARBER Vanessa  

Composed by Samuel Barber
Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti
Presented under license from G, Schirmer, Inc., copyright owners

Andris Nelsons leads some of the most acclaimed stars of opera today in performances of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa, a work considered by many the greatest American opera. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1958, Vanessa premiered at the Metropolitan Opera that year. Barber wrote the opera on a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti; they aimed for a cosmopolitan, nostalgic work on lost love and the consequences of self-delusion. Barber’s romantic lyricism is ever-present in this powerfully affecting work, a centerpiece of this season’s E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One focus.

At the page there are arrows giving links to the performer bios and (hooray!) to the program notes.

Perhaps you can find the libretto somewhere. The program notes willl give a bit of an idea of what is going on, but it will be almost impossible to follow word for word without the libretto. 

The favorable review in the Intelligencer https://www.classical-scene.com/2026/01/10/bso-vanessa/ might be interesrting.

Well, I heard the Saturday afternoon broadcast from the Met in 1958 and didn't much care fior it then. I was there on Thursday evening this week and still don't like it. Apart from a couple of spots (especially the party scene) the music is unmelodic to my ears, and even with supertitles it wasn't always easy to figure out what they were singing. The story itself is kind of interesting, and the guy who sang the role of the Old Doctor was very good, but overall, I can't recommend listening unless you're curious or really like 20th Century music.

BSO — 2024/09/28

 The Boston Symphony Orchestra begins its subscription series in Symphony Hall this week, and WCRB will broadcast the Saturday concerts as usual. Here's how they describe this week's offering:

Saturday, September 28, 2024
8:00 PM

The Boston Symphony Orchestra launches its 2024-25 season with an all-American program led by Music Director Andris Nelsons, including works by critically-acclaimed composer Sarah Kirkland Snider and inaugural BSO Composer Chair Carlos Simon. Also, BSO Principal Clarinet William R. Hudgins is the soloist in Aaron Copland’s delightful Clarinet Concerto, contrasted with Samuel Barber’s soulful Adagio for Strings.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
William R. Hudgins, clarinet

Sarah Kirkland SNIDER Forward into Light
Aaron COPLAND Clarinet Concerto
Samuel BARBER Adagio for Strings
Carlos SIMON Wake Up! Concerto for Orchestra

Meet BSO Composer Chair Carlos Simon in an interview with WCRB's Brian McCreath.

Hear a preview of Copland's Clarinet Concerto with William R. Hudgins using the player above, and read the transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited for clarity):

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Bill Hudgins, Principal Clarinetist of the Boston Symphony.

There was an opening night gala on September 19, but this week the regular season begins. Let's see what the orchestra's performance detail page says.

Andris Nelsons, conductor 
William R. Hudgins, clarinet 

Sarah Kirkland SNIDER Forward into Light 
COPLAND Clarinet Concerto 
BARBER Adagio for Strings 
Carlos SIMON Wake Up: A Concerto for Orchestra 

Music Director Andris Nelsons leads this all-American program including works by inaugural BSO Composer Chair Carlos Simon and recent music by Sarah Kirkland Snider, both of which explore social justice via a musical lens. Two mid-20th-century classics are also featured: BSO Principal Clarinet William R. Hudgins is soloist in Aaron Copland’s delightfully energetic Clarinet Concerto, contrasting with Samuel Barber’s soulful, evergreen Adagio for Strings.

The usual program notes describing the pieces to be performed are linked, as are the performer bios.

The reviews are in. The Intelligencer is blandly approving. The Globe thinks the Copland needed more rehearsal, but is otherwise favorable.

Other than the "Adagio for Strings," this is unfamiliar to me. although I heard the Snider piece when it was performed last spring. This concert hardly qualifies as "must listen," but it could be interesting.

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/09/26

It looks as if WCRB has a pattern, for now. This week's encore broadcast is from January 26, 2020. Last week's, was from January 18, and I think the previous two were also from January. Pattern or no, I was very hurried back on January 25. Here's all I wrote:

The Dvořák is a familiar "warhorse." The stuff before the intermission could be interesting. Performance detail says:

Continuing the BSO’s cycle of music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts Rudolf Barshai’s string-orchestra arrangement of the composer’s Eighth String Quartet, Op. 110 (1960), which the composer suggested was his most autobiographical work. (Barshai was an important conductor and champion of Shostakovich’s music; Op. 110a was the first and most important of several arrangements of Shostakovich’s string quartets.) Completing the program are Samuel Barber’s Medea’s Mediation and Dance of Vengeance, a 15-minute concert work excerpted from a 1946 ballet score for the choreographer Martha Graham, and Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the most important piece he composed during his years in the U.S., when he was director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The beloved four-movement symphony uses musical elements shared by both North American and Czech folk music

(Some emphasis added.)

It's too late for me to find and link reviews. It's on WCRB this evening [at 8:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight time] ….

Now I have time to look for reviews. The one in the Intelligencer is a rave, above all for the Dvořák. The Globe was decidedly less enthusiastic, but didn't find anything really wrong. It may be that the Saturday performance —the one we'll hear and the one reviewed in the Intelligencer — was that much better than the one the Globe reviewer heard on Thursday night.

Anyway, enjoy.

BSO — 2020/01/25

The Dvořák is a familiar "warhorse." The stuff before the intermission could be interesting. Performance detail says:

Continuing the BSO’s cycle of music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts Rudolf Barshai’s string-orchestra arrangement of the composer’s Eighth String Quartet, Op. 110 (1960), which the composer suggested was his most autobiographical work. (Barshai was an important conductor and champion of Shostakovich’s music; Op. 110a was the first and most important of several arrangements of Shostakovich’s string quartets.) Completing the program are Samuel Barber’s Medea’s Mediation and Dance of Vengeance, a 15-minute concert work excerpted from a 1946 ballet score for the choreographer Martha Graham, and Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the most important piece he composed during his years in the U.S., when he was director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The beloved four-movement symphony uses musical elements shared by both North American and Czech folk music

(Some emphasis added.)

It's too late for me to find and link reviews. It's on WCRB this evening and Monday week as usual.

BSO — 2017/01/14

This week's Boston Symphony concert is unusual in that the two works preceding intermission feature the organ. Here's how the BSO describes it on their performance detail page:

English conductor Bramwell Tovey is joined by virtuoso American organist Cameron Carpenter, who makes his BSO subscription series debut in a work written for him, At the Royal Majestic, by the innovative American composer Terry Riley, a founding father of musical minimalism. Himself an organist, Riley created this eclectic large-scale concerto "shifting, as its title suggests, from sounds reminiscent of the Mighty Wurlitzer housed in the grand movie palaces, to fragments of Calliope, Baroque Chorales, occasional craggy dissonance of clashing pipes, and boogie." To open the concert, Carpenter is soloist in Samuel Barber's 1960 organ-and-orchestra work Toccata Festiva, by turns exuberant and lyrical. The English composer Edward Elgar's tour-de-force of orchestral and expressive imagination, the EnigmaVariations, is a series of widely varied portraits of his friends achieved via transformations of a common musical theme.

(Some emphasis added.)

See that page also for links to performer bios, program notes, and audio previews.

The reviews are favorable. The Globe describes things concisely and identifies the two! encores, each of which was spectacular in its own way, and good for giving us a chance to hear the organ unimpeded by sounds from the orchestra. Of course, if there is an encore or two on Saturday, it/they will not necessarily be the same, but I'm sure you'll recognize "Fly Me to the Moon," if he does it. The Boston Musical Intelligencer has more space available for its reviews, and this review describes the music and the performance in greater detail — including noting that Cameron Carpenter played the (optional) organ part in the Elgar.

The concert was enjoyable to listen to. Seeing the organist playing, especially watching his feet on the pedals, certainly added to the experience. He frequently changed the stops, but most of the time, I didn't notice any change in the sound of the organ. But I think it'll be worth hearing even without the added visuals. So I definitely recommend going to WCRB on air or on the internet at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time. If you miss any of it on January 14, they will rebroadcast/stream it at 8:00 p.m. on Monday January 23. Their podcast, "The Answered Question" includes a useful discussion of this week's program during the first 15 minutes.

BSO — December Hiatus — 2016/01/02

The "December Hiatus," as I called it, extends into the first weekend in January. The Boston Symphony returns to Symphony Hall on January 7 to resume their series of concerts. Meanwhile, WCRB gives us another "encore broadcast" and webstream of a concert from last summer's Tanglewood season. This week, the husband-wife duo of Music Director Andris Nelsons and Soprano Kristine Opolias collaborate in a concert given on August 15, 2015. Ms. Opolais sings operatic selections from Boito and Verdi, and the orchestra also plays music of Barber, Puccini, and Strauss.

Specifically, the program is Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra;  "L'altra notte in fondo al mare" from Mephistophele by Boito; the Intermezzo from Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Act III; the "Willow Song and Ave Maria" from Otello by Verdi; and Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. I forget where the intermission comes. The link to the performance detail page in my post at the time it was given is still active and gives you further links to the program notes.

This concert will be broadcast and streamed on January 2, and again on January 10, at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time.

You may also be interested in another "encore" from Tanglewood: the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra with chorus and soloists performing  Mahler's Symphony № 8 on August 8, 2015. WCRB's BSO page describes it as follows:

In an encore broadcast from the 2015 Tanglewood season, Andris Nelsons conducts the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and TMC Alumni, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Chorus, and the American Boychoir in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, the "Symphony of a Thousand," with a cast of soloists that includes soprano Erin Wall, tenor Klaus Forian Vogt, and baritone Matthias Goerne.

(Emphasis added.)

My post has a link to the BSO's performance detail page, with a more complete list of soloists. This broadcast/stream will be on Sunday, January 3, at 7:00 p.m.

On Monday, January 10, we have the usual repeat of the concert broadcast and streamed a week ago, Mozart's final three symphonies, conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi.

Note that the WCRB BSO page has links to their podcast, "The Answered Question" for background interviews about both the Mahler and Mozart concerts.

Happy listening!

Tanglewood — 2015/08/14-16

This is the BSO's final weekend at Tanglewood this year, concluding, as usual in recent years, with the Beethoven 9th on Sunday.


Friday, August 14.  The weekend kicks off with Music Director Andris Nelsons leading the orchestra and solo violinist Christian Tetzlaff in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Mahler's Symphony No. 6. The performance detail page give links to the usual program notes, audio previews, and performer bios. It also gives the following notice:

Several Friday-evening Shed performances will be part of the popular UnderScore Friday series this season. At these performances, patrons will hear comments about the program directly from an onstage BSO musician. UnderScore Fridays will occur on July 17, July 31, and August 14.

This time, trumpeter Benjamin Wright will give the opening remarks.


Saturday, August 15.  Maestro Nelsons returns to the podium, and his wife, Kristine Opolais, joins him and the orchestra for a couple of operatic numbers, including — appropriately for Assumption Day — an Ave Maria. The performance detail page gives this description:

Andris Nelsons conducts an array of Italian operas which include Verdi's Willow Song and "Ave Maria" from Otello, Act IV, Puccini's Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut Act III, and Boito's "L'altra notte in fondo al mare" from MefistofeleAct III starring soprano, Kristine Opolais. The BSO will then perform Strauss's Ein Heldenleben and Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra.

(Some emphasis added.)

Although the way they phrase it implies that both the Strauss and the Barber pieces will come after the operatic selections, the way they are listed lower in the page suggests that the Barber will open the concert, not conclude it. So far there is no background material on the music other than the Strauss.


Sunday, August 16.  As indicated above, this is the final broadcast concert of this Tanglewood season. The performance detail page has some of the usual links, as well as this information about the concert:

The BSO's final concert of the 2015 Tanglewood season, under the direction of Asher Fisch, will open with the TMC Orchestra playing Copland's Symphonic Ode. Also in the program is Beethoven's Symphony no.9, with the Tanglewod Festival Chorus and the TMC Ochestra. Special guests include Julianna Di Giacomo, Renée Tatum, Paul Groves,and John Relyea.

(Emphasis added.)
Although this blurb indicates that the TMC Orchestra (not the BSO) will be performing the Beethoven, elsewhere on the page, when it mentions the TMC Orchestra it puts "(Copland)" after the listing, which suggests they will not be playing the Beethoven. We'll find out who plays the Beethoven when we listen in, I guess.

The Tanglewood Festival Chorus was founded 40 years ago with John Oliver as its director, to serve as the chorus for Boston Symphony and Pops concerts. Among their notable achievements is that they perform without having the printed music in their hands. They memorize every piece they sing, and that is Maestro Oliver's doing. For forty years he has been preparing the chorus for every performance. He is retiring at the end of the Tanglewood season, so the Beethoven Ninth will be the last performance for which he will have prepared the chorus.


The Friday and Saturday concerts will be at 8:30, and the Sunday at 2:30, Boston Time. WCRB will broadcast and stream them. The station's BSO page also has brief blurbs about these concerts. More importantly, since this is the end of the Tanglewood broadcast season, they revert on August 22 to the regular pattern of weekly concerts at 8:00 on Saturdays. That BSO page gives the schedule of "Encore Broadcasts" of concerts from last season that will take us from August 22 through September 26, after which the BSO returns to Symphony Hall and the live broadcasts/webstreams will resume.

The orchestra will be on tour in Europe, with concerts on 12 days in the period August 22—September 5. Then they may be able to take a little vacation before they have to start rehearsing for opening night in Symphony Hall, October 1.

Tanglewood — 2015/07/10-12 (Updated July 11)

This weekend we get a full schedule of concerts from Tanglewood. Mostly, it's music that's more or less familiar to classical audiences (and in some cases, the general public); but there are a couple of items that are new to me, at least, and that I look forward to hearing, along with most of the classics.


Friday, July 10.  The Friday concert features works for organ, with Cameron Carpenter as soloist, and frequent guest conductor Stéphane Denève on the podium. BSO assistant timpanist Daniel Bauch (who seems to play timpani at least a third of the time at Symphony Hall) will be the other soloist in the concerto. Here's how the BSO's performance detail page describes it:

Popular guest conductor Stéphane Denève leads a program featuring the BSO debut of superstar organist Cameron Carpenter performing Poulenc's Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Timpani and Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3, Organ, on a program with Barber's Adagio for Strings. Following his BSO appearance, organist Cameron Carpenter will give a short recital of virtuoso solo works, featuring his Marshall & Ogletree touring organ.

(Some emphasis added.)
See the performance detail page for links to program notes, audio previews, and performer bios (click on the thumbnail picture), as during the Symphony Hall season.

The Barber seems to be the curtain-raiser. It's quite familiar, and deservedly so, IMO. I don't think I've ever heard the Poulenc, and I'm looking forward to hearing it — not that I like Poulenc all that much; I just wonder what it will be like. The Saint-Saëns organ concerto is given now and then at Symphony Hall to showcase the organ there, and it's not bad. I do wonder how the organ will sound outdoors and on what must be a smaller instrument that the one in Symphony Hall. It may well sound fuller over the radio than on the Tanglewood lawn. The show begins at 8:30 p.m., Pittsfield Time (same as Boston Time).


Saturday, July 11.  In an interesting bit of programming, the overture to Verdi's La Forza del Destino will precede a concert performance of the first act of Puccini's Tosca. The BSO performance detail page is concise in its description and has no audio previews, but does give program notes and performer bios along with the following:

Bramwell Tovey will lead an all-Italian program to include a concert performance of Act I from Puccini's Tosca featuring Bryn Terfel as Scarpia and Sondra Radvonovsky as Tosca.

(Some emphasis added.)
The Verdi overture is a good piece: a nice patchwork of music from the opera itself. It seems to me that if Maestro Tovey felt it necessary to precede the Puccini with something else, it would have made sense to go outside the operatic repertoire, rather than preceding it with something designed to precede a different opera. Maybe it will work, though. We'll see. On the other hand, Puccini isn't a big favorite of mine, and I may well listen to the Red Sox after the Verdi. (See edit below.)**

Again, the concert starts at 8:30.


Sunday, July 12. The concert begins at 2:30, with The Light That Fills the World, by John Luther Adams.* Next will be Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3, K. 216, with Pinchas Zukerman as soloist. After intermission, they'll perform Symphony No. 7 by Dvořák. Former BSO assistant conductor Ludovic Morlot, now Music Director of the Seattle Symphony, will conduct the performance. I've told you everything that's mentioned in the blurb on the BSO performance detail page, but it's still worth seeing for the links to program notes, audio previews, and performer bios.

When I saw the Adams work on the program, I was curious about it, and I tracked down a YouTube video of a performance.

It turns out what I saw is the original version of the piece for a chamber ensemble. The composer decided to orchestrate it for a normal-sized symphony orchestra, and that's the version the BSO will play. I found it easy enough to listen to. If you're at all uncertain about contemporary concert music, I suggest reading the composer's description, which is included in the program notes, and listening to the video. I'm looking forward to hearing it again.

* Not to be confused with John Coolidge Adams, the composer of the operas "Nixon in China," "The Death of Klinghoffer," and "Doctor Atomic," among other things.


As always, you can listen to these concerts approximately live over WCRB — either via broadcast, if you're within range of their signal, or via streaming on the world wide web — at the times indicated. The station's BSO page gives a very brief synopsis of each program, as well as a listing of future concerts they'll carry from Tanglewood. Note also, on their home page, an opportunity to vote for concerts from the past year to be broadcast/streamed during the interval in August and September between the end of the Tanglewood season and the beginning of the Symphony Hall season.


**Edited to add: It turns out the "Forza del Destino" overture isn't the only Verdi work on the program. They'll also present his "Stabat Mater," followed by "Ella giammai m'amò" from Don Carlo — which I really like — and "Ehi! paggio! l'onore" from Falstaff — which I don't really know. Then there's an intermission, followed by the Puccini. With these additional pieces, the program makes a lot more sense than just the two pieces shown of the BSO program detail page. I don't understand why the BSO won't list all works in a program on the performance detail page.

Tanglewood — 2014/08/08-10

I'm writing this more than a week in advance, since I'll be away until late Friday afternoon, but I expect to be back by the time the concerts begin. It looks like a rather eclectic weekend.

Friday August 8  This evening's concert features music of the three B's (not the usual three people speak of, but Bolcom, Barlow, and Barber) along with Elgar. It is under the baton of Leonard Slatkin and in honor of his 70th birthday. (Yikes! He's younger than me. I imagined he was older.) The performance detail page, as of this writing — July 31 — has links only for the program notes for the Barber and the performer bios: no notes on the other pieces and no audio links. I hope more will be added as the performance draws near. There is at least the following summary:

The BSO celebrates American conductor Leonard Slatkin's 70th birthday on Friday, August 8, as he leads the orchestra in a program featuring the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom's Circus Overture, commissioned by the BSO for the event. The program also features Wayne Barlow's soulful The Winter's Past, for oboe and strings, with BSO principal oboist John Ferrillo as soloist. Gil Shaham joins Mr. Slatkin and the Orchestra for Barber's Violin Concerto, and the concert concludes with Elgar's kaleidoscopic Enigma Variations.

(Some emphasis added)


Saturday August 9  Again a wide-ranging program awaits on the 9th. The program detail page gives the usual links this time, except for the Szymanowski, and describes the program as follows:

On Saturday, August 9, at 8:30 p.m., French maestro Stéphane Denève takes the podium for a BSO performance pairing music by Tchaikovsky with Debussy's quietly revolutionary Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, which conductor/composer Pierre Boulez said "brought new breath to the art of music." Mr. Denève and the orchestra are then joined by virtuoso Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos for early-20th-century Polish composer Karol Szymanowski's Violin Concerto No. 2. The drama and adrenaline of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 bring the concert to a close.

(Some emphasis added)
Debussy isn't my figurative cup of metaphorical tea, but at least the piece is short. Szymanowski can be quite "modern," but I'm not familiar with this concerto, so I'll be interested to hear how accessible it is.


Sunday August 10  Sunday continues the Tchaikovsky with an all-Tchaikovsky program conducted by David Zinman with Yo-Yo Ma featured as soloist in two of the works. The program detail page tells us

World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma once again takes the stage at Tanglewood on Sunday, August 10, at 2:30 p.m., this time in an all-Tchaikovsky program with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by American maestro David Zinman. Mr. Ma is featured in two works: the Andante cantabile, for cello and strings, and the Variation on a Rococo Theme, for cello and orchestra. The program also includes the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky's operatic masterpiece Eugene Onegin and the perennial favorite Symphony No. 6, Pathétique.

(Some emphasis added)
Again, as of July 31, the links to background material are scant, but that may improve.


WCRB will broadcast and stream all three at the usual times, with pre-concert features a half hour in advance; and their BSO page will probably have links to background material.

Tanglewood — 2014/07/05-06

It's the Boston Symphony's season opener at Tanglewood, with programs Saturday evening at 8:30 and Sunday afternoon at 2:30.

The BSO program detail page describes the opening night program as follows:

Celebrated soprano Renée Fleming opens the 2014 BSO season at Tanglewood in an all-American program. With the Boston Symphony, she will present great works of the American concert hall and opera stage, plus favorites from musical theatre and popular genres. 

(Emphasis added)

The program detail page has links to performer bios (click on the pictures) and program notes Composers are Schwantner, Copland, Barber, Adams, Gershwin, and Rodgers, conductors William Eddins and Rob Fisher.

The page for Sunday afternoon has this to say:

Jerusalem-born conductor Asher Fisch leads a Romantic program fitting for a mid-summer Berkshires' evening. "I've just finished a tiny, tiny piano concerto," Brahms wrote to a friend, referring with great understatement to his piano concerto number 2, a piece as expansive and passionate as a symphony and as intimate at times as a string quartet, and performed alongside the BSO by the magisterial American pianist, Garrick Ohlsson. The preface to the score of Liszt's Romantic symphonic poem Les Preludes reads, in part, "Love is the enchanted dawn of existence," a sentiment echoed in the closing excerpts from Wagner's sunniest opera, Die Meistersinger, a tale of love fulfilled.

(Some emphasis added, and editorial corrections made)

Go there for the usual links, including an audio preview of the Brahms.

As usual, it's all available approximately live on radio and over the web via WCRB. Their BSO page has the whole Tanglewood season broadcast/webstream schedule, as well as links to an interview with Miss Fleming and lots of other things (including recent Pops concerts).

Tanglewood — 2012/08/17-19

August 17.   On Friday evening, the BSO will perform

COPLAND - Suite from Appalachian Spring
BARBER - Violin Concerto
BEETHOVEN - Symphony No. 7

For links to program notes and audio previews, go to the BSO concert details page (or click on the icons above). The Copland is easy listening (but not bad stuff), and the Beethoven 7th is a guaranteed standing ovation producer. Augustin Hadelich solos in the Barber. Click on his photo for more info about him. It will be interesting to hear his first performance with the BSO.


August 18.  Saturday brings us "John Williams' 80th Birthday Celebration." On the details page, you can find photos depicting some of the participants (but no links to notes or audio). You get name and position by moving your cursor to the picture, and more info by clicking on it. They will give us

WILLIAMS - Olympic Fanfare and Theme KERN & HAMMERSTEIN - "The Song Is You" WILLIAMS - Three Concert Pieces WILLIAMS - Adventures on Earth from E.T. The Extra-terrestrial WILLIAMS - Fanfare for Fenway -
WILLIAMS - Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ARR. WILLIAMS - Air and Simple Gifts WILLIAMS - Going to School from Memoirs of a Geisha WILLIAMS - Theme from Schindler's List WILLIAMS - Main Title from Star Wars WILLIAMS - Happy Birthday Variations

August 19.  The Sunday matinee brings us the Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert, conducted this year by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos

BEETHOVEN - Violin Concerto
BARTÓK - Concerto for Orchestra

This time the details page gives us the usual links to notes and audio. Gil Shaham solos in the Beethoven "Mientkiewicz" Concerto. It's one of the pieces I really like. The Bartók Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky and premiered by the BSO. I have the feeling that the BSO owns this piece. So I'm especially looking forward to this concert. Edited to add: But it's not the Boston Symphony Orchestra that will be playing on Sunday afternoon. It will be the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra: the students who are attending the BSO's"summer school" at Tanglewood.

Classical New England will broadcast/stream all three, with the usual warm-ups beforehand. See also their page about the BSO. Friday and Saturday concerts are at 7:30, Boston Time, and Sunday's is at 2:30. Tanglewood-related (loosely, at least) material begins 1 1/2 hours before the concert, with Ron Della Chiesa taking over as announcer 1/2 hour before the concert.