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:

Tanglewood — 2017/08/18-20

Three orchestras in three days at Tanglewood.

Friday, August 18, 2017.  It's an Underscore Friday, with introductory remarks from Principal Trombone Toby Oft. The Boston Symphony plays this evening. On the performance detail page we read:

On Friday, August 18, British baritone Simon Keenlyside makes his Tanglewood debut performing selections from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Rückert-Lieder with conductor David Afkham and the orchestra. Mr. Afkham also leads the BSO in Brahms's energetic Symphony No. 2. Patrons will hear comments about this program from BSO Principal Trombone Toby Oft.

(Some emphasis added.)

The page has the usual links.


Saturday, August, 19, 2017.  The Boston Pops are in the Shed for John Williams' Film Night. Andris Nelsons and John Williams share the podium. From the performance detail page:

John Williams' Film Night has long been established as one of the Tanglewood calendar's most consistently popular evenings. Sharing the podium this summer for what surely will be an historic concert is BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons. The program will feature classic cinema scores by Erich Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, and Alex North, as well as music by Mr. Williams himself, including selections from the Harry Potter series, E.T., and Far and Away. Also on the program will be music from Mr. Williams' score to Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, with a special guest trumpet soloist.

(Some emphasis added.)


Sunday, August 20, 2017,  brings the Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert, performed by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. The performance detail page tells us,

Andris Nelsons leads the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in the Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert on Sunday, August 20, in the Shed. Brilliant English pianist Paul Lewis joins Mr. Nelsons and the orchestra for Beethoven's dramatic and tumultuous Third Piano Concerto. Strauss's large-scale An Alpine Symphony, the composer's last tone poem, depicting an eleven-hour hike of an Alpine mountain, closes the program.

(Some emphasis added.)


Hear it all on line or on air via WCRB at 8:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 7:00 p. m. on Sunday.

Tanglewood — 2016/07/29-31

Friday, July 29.  Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts this evening's concert as well as the remaining two broadcasts of the weekend. This evening the concert opens with Mozart's Piano Concerto № 27 in B-flat, K.595, with Jonathan Biss tickling the ivories. After intermission, Maestro Nelsons will lead the orchestra in Symphony № 9 by Gustav Mahler. The BSO's own performance detail page lacks their usual synopsis of the program but it does contain the familiar links to audio previews and program notes, with performer bios available by clicking the thumbnail picture.

In the 1950's my father's Aunt Glad gave us a 3-speed record player and changer. The first thing I played on it was a multi-record 78 rpm set of Robert Casadesus playing the Mozart 27th with the New York Philharmonic conducted by John Barbirolli. I was instantly captivated by the piece, and it has remained one of my favorites. Some writers seem to consider it a lightweight. It was Mozart's last piano concerto, and I gather they would like something more majestic for his "farewell" to the genre; but of course he had no way of knowing that this was to be his last, and on its own it's beautiful. I'm really looking forward to hearing it again.

As for the Mahler, the orchestra performed it with Maestro Nelsons last April. I reviewed it at the time, and liked it, especially after the first movement, so I'm also looking forward to hearing it again. It will be interesting to hear if the Tanglewood audience remains silent at the end for a few moments as the Symphony Hall audience did in April .


Saturday, July 30.  Maestro Nelsons conducts the orchestra, and Augustin Hadelich is violin soloist in the program which the BSO performance detail page describes as follows:

On Saturday, July 30, at 8 p.m.,  Maestro Nelsons returns to the Shed podium to lead the BSO in a program that pairs Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer John Corigliano's expressive  Fantasia on an Ostinato(1985, arranged for orchestra in 1986) with the work that inspired it, Beethoven's rousing Symphony No. 7, one of the composer's most popular works. Corigliano's piece is based on a famous repetitive passage from the second movement of Beethoven's symphony. In between those two works, young German violinist  Augustin Hadelich joins Mr. Nelsons and the orchestra for Sibelius's soaring Violin Concerto, a pinnacle of the concerto repertoire.

(Some emphasis added and some removed.)

The program detail page also has the usual links to background information.

The violin concerto is being played for the third time in as many years. It's not a bad piece, but maybe there are things that deserve a hearing ahead of another repetition of this one. The Beethoven was performed last March, and is played, it seems, every two years or so. Again, could something else have been given instead of  yet another Beethoven 7th — although the presence of the Corigliano on the program makes it appropriate. Ah well, it gets pointed out that for Tanglewood, the orchestra has to prepare two or three concert programs every week, whereas for Symphony all it's only one program per week. The daunting task is made more manageable when they do works that they have performed recently. So maybe I should reserve these criticisms for the winter season.

Although I don't know the Corigliano, it sounds as if it will be interesting, and the other pieces are definitely worth hearing. So listen if you can.


Sunday, July 31.  On Sunday, it's all Brahms, performed by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, which is made up of the young professional musicians studying at Tanglewood over the summer. The BSO program detail page informs us:

The Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert

Renowned English pianist Paul Lewis joins Andris Nelsons and the instrumental Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra on Sunday, July 31, for the annual Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert. The all-Brahms program opens with the Piano Concerto No. 1, the composer's first large-scale orchestral masterpiece and a work that took some eight years and considerable struggle for the composer to complete. Mr. Nelsons also leads the BSO in the composer's powerful, heroic Symphony No. 1, the only piece that gave Brahms even more trouble than his First Piano Concerto, requiring more than 20 years of false starts, abandoned drafts, and torturous labor to bring to fruition, and thereby fulfill the public's expectation that he was to become the symphonic heir to Beethoven.

(Some emphasis added or modified.)

Brahms's concertos and symphonies aren't my cup of tea, so I might not listen, especially if it conflicts with a Red Sox game. But that's my personal idiosyncracy. Most people nowadays think Brahms is great, so enjoy!

The Friday and Saturday concerts can be heard via WCRB radio or web at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time, and the Sunday program will be aired and streamed at 7:00, p.m. (not live at 2:30). Their home page, in addition to the link to listen over the web, gives information about other special programming which may be of interest. Their BSO page, in addition to brief descriptions of the Saturday and Sunday concerts, gives similar information about the remaining Tanglewood concert broadcasts and various other interesting items and links.

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.