BSO/Classical New England — 2017/05/13

The Boston Symphony 2016-17 season ended last week, and Tanglewood will begin on July 7. Meanwhile, WCRB will fill the Saturday time slot with rebroadcasts. This week it's the concert of March 5, 2016 — with music of  Ravel and Falla — which I posted about at the time. Check out the station's schedule of May and June BSO "encore broadcasts," and listen on air or on line at 8:00 p.m., May 13 over WCRB. There will not be a Monday repeat.

Tanglewood — 2012/08/24-26

August 24.  This evening Tanglewood invites us:

Gershwin and Friends

Join Keith Lockhart, the Pops, and favorite guest vocalists for a celebration of George Gershwin and the creators of the Great American Songbook, including Irving Berlin,  Jerome Kern and Cole Porter. The program also features Gershwin's classic Rhapsody in Blue.

The link above contains a further link to the program notes for the concert and pictures of performers that give identification when you put your cursor on them.


August 25.  Saturday evening, frequent guest conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos will lead a program of Spanish Music:

ALBÉNIZ - (arr. Frühbeck de Burgos) Suite española
FALLA - La vida breve
Full Program Notes - Saturday, August 25, 8:30pm

Program notes are available by clicking the icons to the right of the listings, and, again, information about soloists is given on the detail page when you bring the cursor to the picture — more detail if you click on it.


August 26.  On Sunday afternoon Maestro Frühbeck leads the now-traditional Beethoven Ninth to close the Tanglewood season with a guaranteed "standing O." But there's more: the world premiere of a piece titled "Koussevitsky Said," by John Harbison, for chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the BSO for Tanglewood's 75th anniversary. Here's the listing on the detail page with its links to notes (and audio for the Beethoven):

HARBISON - Koussevitzky said:, for chorus and orchestra (world premiere; BSO commission)
BEETHOVEN - Symphony No. 9
Full Program Notes - Sunday, August 26, 2:30pm

I'm really looking forward to hearing the Harbison piece — even more so after reading the program notes. I think once you read the notes, you'll want to hear it too.


Broadcasts and webstreams are scheduled as in previous weeks on Classical New England. CNE's "second page" via the BSO label, has a link to an interesting interview with John Harbison (not just a rehash of the BSO program notes). The page also tells us what Classical New England will use to fill the BSO concert slots on the three weekends between the end of the Tanglewood Season and the opening night of the Symphony Hall Season.

Enjoy!

Tanglewood — 2011/08/12-14

The BSO website says it best:

Bizet, Rodrigo, Boccherini/Berio, Falla, Granados and Giménez 
Friday, August 12, 8:30PM

Maestro Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos returns for the second week in a row to lead the BSO in an August 12 program dedicated to Spanish and Spanish-inspired music, repertoire championed by Mr. Frühbeck throughout his career. World-renowned guitar virtuoso and fellow Spaniard Pepe Romero makes his Tanglewood debut in this concert, highlights of which include Preludes from Bizet’s Seville-set opera Carmen; Rodrigo’sConcierto de Aranjuez, surely the best-known work for guitar and orchestra; and the Interlude and First Dance from Falla’s La vida breve (Life is Short), an opera about the doomed love of a gypsy woman for an upper-class man. 

Prokofiev, Schumann and Brahms 
Saturday, August 13, 8:30PM

Two of classical music’s most decorated artists join the BSO August 13 as the inimitable cellist Yo-Yo Ma performs as soloist and German-Hungarian conductor Christoph von Dohnányi leads the orchestra. Opening the program is Prokofiev’s effervescent Symphony No. 1, Classical. Mr. Ma takes the lead in Schumann’s free-flowing and adventurous Cello Concerto, and the evening concludes with Brahms’s monumental Symphony No. 1, with which the composer finally took up the imposing symphonic mantel [sic] of Beethoven. 

Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra: All-Brahms 
Sunday, August 14, 2:30PM

On Sunday afternoon, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra pays homage to Brahms with a concert dedicated entirely to his music, including Nänie, a work for chorus and orchestra that sets a poem by Schiller contemplating mortality; Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), something of a miniature counterpart to the German Requiem; the Alto Rhapsody¸ a piece for mezzo-soprano, male chorus, and orchestra written as a wedding gift for Schumann’s daughter; and the great Symphony No. 2. The young orchestra is conducted by Mr. Frühbeck and joined by mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. 

Careful readers will have noted that although the heading for Friday evening promises "Bizet, Rodrigo, Boccherini/Berio, Falla, Granados and Giménez ", the body says nothing about Boccherini/Berio, Granados, or Giménez. But elsewhere, the website promises us "BOCCHERINI/BERIO Ritirata notturna di Madrid" before the Falla and "GRANADOS Intermezzo from Goyescas" and "GIMÉNEZ Intermezzo from La boda de Luís Alonso" afterwards. (Maybe the BSO website doesn't say it best, after all.) This website page with complete listings in turn has links to notes on all the works, and audio for all but Bizet and Granados.

Other pages offer links for notes and audio for the Saturday and Sunday concerts.

Go to WCRB for the stream, including pre-concert features, if you don't have a broadcast provider where you live.

BSO — 2010/11/04-09

Here's the description from the BSO website.

Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos returns to lead music from the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. Sung in Catalan, Atlàntida (“Atlantis”), an epic of the lost continent and its rediscovery by Columbus, was Falla’s magnum opus, begun in 1927 and left incomplete at his death in 1946. The Spanish composer Ernesto Halffter completed a version that was premiered in 1976. Maestro Frühbeck has devised a 35-minute vocal-orchestral suite almost solely from Falla’s original music from the Prologue and Parts I and III, with focus on the significant episodes for chorus. The second half of the program is the great Symphony No. 2 of Johannes Brahms.

I'll be going tonight and you can listen, as usual, on Saturday.

I'll try to remember to add a link for the Globe's review and maybe post some comments of my own.

Note 2010/11/06 If you decide to listen to the Falla, you'll probably want to check for a text from the BOS or WCRB website.

BTW, I did get a ticket for the Tuesday evening performance of the Doctor Atomic Symphony, and I found it worth listening to, especially the third part. It would be nice to have another chance to hear it. I'd be happy if they replaced either the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde on November 26 or Till Eulenspiegel on January 13 with a reprise of Dr. Atomic while it's still fresh in the players' memories. Talk about a "surprise symphony" for the audience! LOL