Feb 1
Boston Symphony Announces 2024 Tanglewood Season
READ TIME: 7 MIN.
Tanglewood–the famed music and learning campus and summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, situated in the beautiful Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts–has announced details of its 2024 season, opening in late June through August 31. The fabled concert retreat was seen prominently in the recent released biopic "Maestro" about Leonard Bernstein, who made his mark there during his long association with the BSO.
For more information, visit the Boston Symphony Orchestra website.
The 2024 Tanglewood season will feature more than 100 performances, including eleven weeks of concerts and other events by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Tanglewood Music Center, and Tanglewood Learning Institute; chamber music, recital, and concert opera presentations in Ozawa Hall; and a series of Popular Artist concerts, highlighted this summer by the 50th-anniversary performance of James Taylor and his All-Star Band in the Koussevitzky Music Shed on July 3 and 4. In some of the most eagerly anticipated events of the 2024 Tanglewood season, BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons will lead ten programs and two master classes in his new expanded role as Head of Conducting at Tanglewood including a weekend of programs celebrating the legacy of Serge Koussevitzky (July 26-28).
The BSO's July 5 Opening Night all-Beethoven program with violin virtuoso Hilary Hahn launches a season that will shine a spotlight on a wide spectrum of musical guests and the festival's rich tradition of presenting summertime concerts at their best since 1937. Other Opening Weekend concerts feature Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops performing favorites from Broadway today on July 6, and Nelsons leading soprano Renée Fleming in an all-Strauss program on July 7. Taken together, they set the stage for a summer exploring a unique breadth of music and related programming, as well as an extraordinary roster of the leading artists of our day, including Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell (marking his 35th consecutive summer at Tanglewood), Yefim Bronfman, Leonidas Kavakos, Paul Lewis, Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yuja Wang, and John Williams, among many others.
Celebrating Koussevitzky
In observance of the 150th birth anniversary of Russian-born conductor, composer, and double bassist Sergei Koussevitzky (1874–1951) and the 100 years since his appointment as the BSO's pioneering music director, the BSO performs music he either composed, premiered, championed, or commissioned on the weekend of his actual birthday, July 26. As the BSO's ninth conductor and the first to hold the title of Music Director, Koussevitzky conducted his first concerts in the Berkshires in 1936 and founded the Berkshire Music Center (later to be named Tanglewood Music Center) in 1940, creating a premier music academy where talented young professional musicians could access the resources of a great symphony orchestra, honing their skills under the mentorship of BSO musicians and other luminaries in the field. TMC alumni include Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Michael Tilson Thomas, Mario Lanza, Wynton Marsalis, Burt Bacharach, Dawn Upshaw, Leontyne Price, and Phyllis Curtin, as well as more than 40 current BSO musicians.
Source: Hilary Scott)
Andris Nelsons' Additional Programs
In addition to the two Opening Weekend concerts and the three Koussevitzky 150 programs described above, Andris Nelsons will lead four other BSO programs in July. In one of several collaborations this summer with other performing arts institutions, the BSO partners with Boston Ballet for a July 12 concert that pairs Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade with Stravinsky's neoclassical ballet Apollon Musagète. Accompanying the BSO on the Shed stage for the Stravinsky are members of Boston Ballet, led by artistic director Mikko Nissinen, who will dance the original choreography created by the 24-year-old George Balanchine for the 1928 premiere. Later that same weekend, on July 13, piano sensation Yuja Wang joins the BSO (concerto to be announced later), followed on July 14 by violinist Augustin Hadelich in Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto, complementing a program of music by contemporary American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider and Dvořák.
In another major festival moment, and reaffirming Mr. Nelsons' commitment to an opera presentation each season at the Shed, is a concert performance of Act III of Wagner's Götterdämmerung on July 20. Soprano Christine Goerke headlines an all-star cast as Brünnhilde with Swedish tenor Michael Weinius as Siegfried (in his BSO debut), soprano Amanda Majeski as Gutrune, baritone James Rutherford as Gunther, and bass Morris Robinson as Hagen.
Nelsons will also conduct two Shed concerts with the Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellows and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. The first will include Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 on July 8, and the second will feature Emanuel Ax performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 along with works by Ives and Strauss on July 21.
Source: Getty Images
Acclaimed Guest Conductors and Artists
This season offers a parade of returning guest conductors and favorite guest artists with the BSO in the Shed, beginning with Dima Slobodeniouk and pianist Conrad Tao performing Bernstein's Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety (July 19), on the same program with Brahms' Third Symphony. Alan Gilbert conducts two BSO concerts: first, accompanying pianist Kirill Gerstein, violinist Joshua Bell, and cellist Steven Isserlis on an all-Beethoven program (August 4), and next leading Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring with Gerstein performing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 (August 9).
Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska makes her BSO and Tanglewood debuts with two works by Sibelius and Leila Josefowicz performing Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in her Tanglewood debut (August 10). BSO-debuting conductor James Gaffigan is paired with young Cuban American soprano Elena Villalón who also makes her BSO and Tanglewood debuts in selections from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Idomeneo, as well as Mahler's Symphony No. 4 (August 11). BSO Assistant Conductor Samy Rachid makes his BSO and Tanglewood debuts leading Midori in Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 on a program that includes Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 and Svetlanov's Dawn in the Field (August 16). BSO Assistant Conductor Earl Lee conducts Yo-Yo Ma in Schumann's Cello Concerto with Carlos Simon's Fate Now Conquers and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 (August 18). Up-and-coming American conductor Ryan Bancroft makes his BSO debut along with Bruce Liu in Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, followed by Elgar's Enigma Variations (August 23).
Karina Canellakis accompanies violinist Leonidas Kavakos in Chausson's Poème on a program that features the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Ravel (August 24). Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu debuts at Tanglewood leading the orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in the annual season-closing performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (August 25).
Another season highlight is Los Angeles Philharmonic Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel in his first appearance at Tanglewood since 2006 conducting the National Children's Symphony of Venezuela for its Tanglewood debut in the Shed (August 8), performing music by John Adams, Estévez, Ginastera, and Shostakovich.
The Boston Pops
In his 29th summer at Tanglewood, Keith Lockhart leads the Boston Pops in an Opening Weekend performance (July 6) of Broadway Today!: Broadway's Modern Masters, showcasing groundbreaking songs from such recent Tony-winning musicals as Hamilton, In the Heights, The Light in the Piazza, Kimberly Akimbo, The Band's Visit, Hadestown, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, and Dear Evan Hansen, and featuring current Broadway stars, including Victoria Clark, Micaela Diamond, Mandy Gonzalez, and Joshua Henry. By popular demand, there will be two presentations of John Williams' Film Night, with conductors John Williams and Ken-David Masur (August 2 and 3). Lockhart and the Pops return on August 17 for Jurassic Park In Concert, performing Williams' iconic score live to a screening of the film, abounding with visually stunning imagery and groundbreaking special effects projected in high definition.
