Tanglewood — 2025/07/19-20

 "A night at the opera" and an evening of orchestral music await us today and tomorrow.

 We get "a night at the opera" this evening and orchestrea music tomorrow/

July 19, 2025

Here's WCRB's description: https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2025-04-23/puccinis-tosca-live-from-tanglewood 

Saturday, July 19, 2025
8:00 PM

Andris Nelsons, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a cast of phenomenal singers bring Puccini’s operatic tale of love and treachery, “Tosca,” to the Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood. Floria Tosca, driven by jealousy and love, struggles to save her lover, painter Mario Cavaradossi, from the sadistic chief of police, Baron Scarpia.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Kristine Opolais, soprano (Tosca)
SeokJong Baek, tenor (Cavaradossi)
Bryn Terfel, baritone (Scarpia)
Patrick Carfizzi, bass-baritone (Sacristan)
Neal Ferreira, tenor (Spoletta)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
 James Burton, conductor

Giacomo PUCCINI Tosca

For more information on Tanglewood concerts, visit the BSO box office.

The BSO's performance detail page https://www.bso.org/events/bso-july-19-puccini-tosca?performance=2025-07-19-20%3A00 doesn't tell us much more, but it does have a link to the program notes as well as to performer bios:

Sat, Jul 19, 2025 8:00pm EDT 

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Boston Symphony OrchestraAndris Nelsons, ConductorKristine Opolais, soprano (Tosca)SeokJong Baek, tenor (Cavaradossi)Bryn Terfel, baritone (Scarpia)Morris Robinson, bass (Angelotti)Patrick Carfizzi, bass-baritone (Sacristan)Nicholas Newton, bass-baritone (Sciarrone/The Jailer)Neal Ferreira, tenor (Spoletta)Ari Davis, boy soprano (Shepard Boy)Tanglewood Festival ChorusJames Burton, BSO Choral Director and Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival ChorusBoston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists’ Chorus

PUCCINI Tosca

Concert performance; sung in Italian with English supertitles. Please note that the onstage drama of Tosca features rifles and a starter pistol that will be fired in Act III.

The opera has its dramatic moments. If you can find a libretto, it might be useful.

July 19, 2025

There will be some discrepancies between what WCRB tells us and what we see in the BSO page because the piano soloist soesn't want his performance broadcast. Here's what 'CRB says:

Sunday, July 20, 2025
7:00 PM

Boston Symphony Music Director Andris Nelsons leads the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in two masterpieces that highlight the virtuosity and expressive range of the young professionals of the TMC, starting with the Symphony No. 2 by Brahms, recorded on July 7, followed by Hector Berlioz’s musical depiction of all-consuming, obsessive love, Symphonie fantastique.

Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Yiran Zhao, conductor (Smetana)

Johannes BRAHMS Symphony No. 2
Bedrich SMETANA Vltava (The Moldau)
Hector BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique

Yuja Wang's performance of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 is not available for broadcast at the soloist's request.

Although the evening broadcast will differ from the live show in the afternoon, the program detail page https://www.bso.org/events/july-20-tmco-yuja-wang?performance=2025-07-20-14%3A30 at least gives acxces to the program notes for the Berlioz. Here's the url for the July 7 program detail page https://www.bso.org/events/july-7-twd-music-ctr-orch?performance=2025-07-07-20:00 

Note that the orchestra is the lTanglewood Festival Orchestra, the students who are in the summer pprogram at Tanglewood. They're quite good, of course.

So it may seem a bit confusing, but it's all good music.

Saturday brings French composition, as WCRB notes:

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/12/26

 Once again, with no effort on my part, it's Saturday; and once again WCRB is taking us back five seasons, to hear an all-Czech concert. Their BSO page informs us:

Saturday, December 26, 2020
8:00 PM

In a 2016 Boston Symphony Orchestra concert, Johannes Moser is the soloist in Dvorák's Cello Concerto, and Ludovic Morlot conducts Smetana's "The Moldau" and Martinu's Sixth Symphony, Fantaisies symphoniques.

Encore broadcast from Jan. 23, 2016

Ludovic Morlot, conductor
Johannes Moser, cello

SMETANA “The Moldau” from Ma Vlast
MARTINŮ Fantaisies symphoniques (Symphony No. 6)
DVORÁK Cello Concerto

WCRB's Brian McCreath talks with Johannes Moser about the Dvorák Cello Concerto and his life as a concert soloist:

Listen 

Listening...

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Conductor Ludovic Morlot describes the experience of stepping in on short notice to lead this BSO concert and what he learned about Czech music by performing it in Prague:

Listen 

Listening...

0:00

(Most emphasis added.)

Here, edited to remove content no longer valid, is what I wrote at that point in time:

This week it's an all-Czech program under the baton of Ludovic Morlot, who has stepped in to replace Czech conductor Jiři Bělohlávek, who had been scheduled to conduct these concerts. First on the program is Vltava (The Moldau), by Smetana. That is followed by Martinů'sFantaisies symphoniques (Symphony № 6). After intermission, Johannes Moser is soloist in Dvořák's Cello Concerto. The orchestra's performance detail page has […] the following note about two of the pieces on the program (no idea why they don't mention the Dvořák):

Seattle Symphony Orchestra Music Director and former BSO Assistant Conductor Ludovic Morlot  leads an all-Czech program featuring three different generations of composers. Smetana was the first and most important Czech nationalist composer, and the tone poem The Moldau, from his large orchestral suite My Country, is by far his most familiar piece. Bohuslav Martinů studied in Paris and adopted a more cosmopolitan style, but a Czech flavor infuses much of his work. The rich and colorful, thirty-minute Fantaisies symphoniques was commissioned for the orchestra's 75th anniversary and was premiered in 1955.

I'm not familiar with the Martinů symphony, but the others are staples of the repertory and pleasant enough to listen to. The Globe's reviewerwas pleased with the performances and even more pleased that the orchestra was playing the symphony they had commissioned over 60 years ago. The Boston Musical Intelligencer gives a very favorable review, including a very imaginative description if the Martinů. I had to miss the concert in order to attend a meeting I needed to be at, so I  can't add anything to the published reviews. Based on them, I'm looking forward to the broadcast on WCRB at 8:00 p.m. Saturday […]. It is also streamed over the web at [that time].

[…]

So I think this'll be worth hearing, although the Martinů may be a bit "advanced." Enjoy!

And here's the link for the review in the Intelligencer, which I neglected to include in my original post.

BSO — 2019/10/05

Sorry. I've run out of time. Here's the basics.

https://www.bso.org/Performance/Detail/102512/  See this page for the usual links to additional information.

Firebrand Chinese pianist Yuja Wang returns to Symphony Hall to perform Shostakovich’s brightly powerful Piano Concerto No. 1, which includes virtuosic exchanges between the pianist and a solo trumpet, here the BSO’s principal trumpet, Thomas Rolfs. Opening the program is American composer James Lee III’s celebratory, at times mysterious Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, a ten-minute work referring to the autumnal Feast of the Tabernacles. (Lee was a 2002 Fellow of the BSO’s Tanglewood Music Center.) Closing the program is music from Bedřich Smetana’s patriotic orchestral cycle Má Vlast (“My Country”), colorful and widely varying musical pictures evoking the composer’s Czech homeland.

BSO/Classical New England — 2017/04/08

This week the orchestra isn't playing in Symphony Hall (or anywhere else that I can see on their website). So WCRB is giving us a rerun of a concert from 15 months ago. Here's the description on their Upcoming BSO Broadcasts page, where you can also see the broadcast/webstream schedule for the rest of the season:

Saturday, April 8
Johannes Moser is the soloist in Dvorák's Cello Concerto, part of an All-Czech program that also includes "The Moldau," from Smetana's My Country, and Martinu's Fantaisies symphoniques (Symphony No. 6), all conducted by Ludovic Morlot, in a concert recorded on January 23, 2016.
Ludovic Morlot, conductor
Johannes Moser, cello
SMETANA “The Moldau” from Ma Vlast
MARTINU Fantaisies symphoniques (Symphony No. 6)
DVORAK Cello Concerto

Of course, I posted about it at the time of the performance. Unfortunately, I neglected to include a link to the review in BMInt. Here it is.

Anyway, this should be worth tuning in or listening on line on Saturday at 8:00 p.m. Boston Time. It doesn't look as if they're planning to play it again on Monday the 17th.

BTW, while I was looking up the BMInt review of this week's rebroadcast, I noticed that there is an extensive, and fascinating to me, discussion about conducting in the comments on the review of last week's concert.

BSO — 2016/10/15

This week the Boston Symphony concert which WCRB will broadcast and stream at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 15, and replay on Monday, October 24, consists of four works by eastern European composers. The orchestra's performance detail page provides some specifics, along woth the usual links to background information.

The Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša, making his BSO debut, is joined by acclaimed German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann for Béla Bartók's scintillating Violin Concerto No. 2, a 1938 work strongly influenced by Central European folk music. The other three works on the program are based on Slavic myth and legend. Smetana's Šárka, a tone poem from his large cycle Má Vlast ("My Country"), is named for a legendary Czech maiden warrior and illustrates an episode from her life. Mussorgsky's famously scary Night on Bald Mountain (depicted in Disney's Fantasia) seems to have originated in plans for an unrealized opera on the subject of a witches' sabbath, in part inspired by the great Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Based on a Gogol novella, Janáček's 1918 orchestral rhapsody Taras Bulba is one of his most familiar works-but has never been performed by the BSO.

(Some emphasis added. As is often the case, this note mixes up the order of the pieces. Šarka is first, followed by the concerto. After intermission, it's Mussorgsky and Janáček, as stated.)

This concert wasn't part of my subscription, so I can't give you my impressions, but the reviews were favorable. The Globe's reviewer was very happy with how Maestro Hrůša conducted the pieces but not entirely satisfied with Mr. Zimermann's playing in the outer movements of the Bartók. The Boston Musical Intelligencer thought Mr. Zimmermann was fine (but found minor fault with the woodwinds in the concerto). The reviewer was also pleased with the playing and the conducting in the remaining pieces. He did, however, wish that the conductor had chosen Mussorgsky's own, "raw" version of his piece over Rimsky-Korsakov's tamer orchestration. He was also displeased with the nationalism of the Janáček — not a musical complaint, but still one which a listener to a narrative piece of music is entitled to have.

I'm looking forward to hearing this concert this evening, and catching up on what I miss during my brother's phone call when it's rebroadcast and streamed on the 24th. It should make for an exciting evening of music. Listen over WCRB, and consult their specialized pages for the remaining broadcast/webstream schedule as well as links to other background material, such as their own weekly podcast.

BSO — 2016/01/21-23

This week it's an all-Czech program under the baton of Ludovic Morlot, who has stepped in to replace Czech conductor Jiři Bělohlávek, who had been scheduled to conduct these concerts. First on the program is Vltava (The Moldau), by Smetana. That is followed by Martinů's Fantaisies symphoniques (Symphony № 6). After intermission, Johannes Moser is soloist in Dvořák's Cello Concerto. The orchestra's performance detail page has all the usual links to background information, which is well worth reading and listening to. It also has the following note about two of the pieces on the program (no idea why they don't mention the Dvořák):

Seattle Symphony Orchestra Music Director and former BSO Assistant Conductor Ludovic Morlot  leads an all-Czech program featuring three different generations of composers. Smetana was the first and most important Czech nationalist composer, and the tone poem The Moldau, from his large orchestral suite My Country, is by far his most familiar piece. Bohuslav Martinů studied in Paris and adopted a more cosmopolitan style, but a Czech flavor infuses much of his work. The rich and colorful, thirty-minute Fantaisies symphoniques was commissioned for the orchestra's 75th anniversary and was premiered in 1955.

I'm not familiar with the Martinů symphony, but the others are staples of the repertory and pleasant enough to listen to. The Globe's reviewer was pleased with the performances and even more pleased that the orchestra was playing the symphony they had commissioned over 60 years ago. The Boston Musical Intelligencer gives a very favorable review, including a very imaginative description if the Martinů. I had to miss the concert in order to attend a meeting I needed to be at, so I  can't add anything to the published reviews. Based on them, I'm looking forward to the broadcast on WCRB at 8:00 p.m. Saturday (to be rebroadcast on Monday, February 1, also at 8:00). It is also streamed over the web at those times.

WCRB also has their own Boston Symphony page with the broadcast/streaming schedule for the remainder of the season as well as links to their podcast, "The Answered Question," and on-demand access to a year's worth of previous BSO concerts. This week's podcast includes interviews with both the conductor and the soloist in the concert.

So I think this'll be worth hearing, although the Martinů may be a bit "advanced." Enjoy!

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.