There gained’t be the normal, grand closing-night efficiency of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with its stage filled with singers. In truth, to scale back the danger of aerosol transmission of the coronavirus, there shall be no vocal music in any respect at Tanglewood this summer time.
But there’ll nonetheless be numerous Beethoven, together with crowd-pleasing tributes to the composer John Williams and acquainted visitors like Emanuel Ax, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Joshua Bell and Yo-Yo Ma.
Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s warm-weather dwelling within the Berkshires, introduced in March that after remaining closed final yr due to the pandemic, it might open this summer time for a six-week season — about half the standard size — with restricted crowds and distancing necessities. On Thursday, the orchestra crammed within the programming: heavy on appearances by its music director, Andris Nelsons, and with a give attention to Beethoven, whose 250th birthday last year was muted due to widespread live performance cancellations.
Nelsons will lead eight orchestral applications, together with a Beethoven opener on July 10 that includes the “Emperor” Piano Concerto, with Ax as soloist, and the Fifth Symphony. On July 23, the Boston Pops will honor Williams, who turns 90 subsequent yr and is the Pops’ laureate conductor; the next night, Mutter provides the premiere of his Violin Concerto No. 2, and on Aug. 13 Williams shares the rostrum for an evening of movie music. On July 30, the violinist Leonidas Kavakos does Beethoven trios with Ax and Ma, who additionally performs with the Boston Symphony beneath Karina Canellakis on Aug. 8. (Details can be found at bso.org.)
Throughout the summer time, performances will final not than 80 minutes, with out intermissions, and all concert events will happen within the Koussevitzky Music Shed, which is open on the edges. The house, which normally holds hundreds, can have a lowered capability, as will the garden that surrounds it — a favourite spot for picnicking. Tanglewood is ready to announce what may go ahead in late summer time of its well-loved collection of pop performers like James Taylor.
Students on the Tanglewood Music Center, the orchestra’s prestigious summer time academy, will play chamber concert events on Sunday mornings and Monday afternoons, and applications are deliberate for the Tanglewood Learning Institute, a collection of lectures, talks and grasp courses that began with great fanfare in 2019. The orchestra will host a two-day model of its annual Festival of Contemporary Music, July 25-26.
The Knights, a chamber orchestra, shall be joined on July 9 by the jazz and classical pianist Aaron Diehl for Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and alternatives from Mary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite.” Among the Boston Symphony’s visitor conductors shall be Thomas Adès (the orchestra’s creative associate), Alan Gilbert, Anna Rakitina and Herbert Blomstedt; soloists embrace the pianists Daniil Trifonov, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Kirill Gerstein, and the violinists Baiba Skride and Lisa Batiashvili.
The Tanglewood season is a part of the nationwide thawing planned for this summer of a performing arts scene that has been largely frozen for over a yr. The Public Theater has introduced that its venerable Shakespeare within the Park will go ahead, as will Santa Fe Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York. On Thursday, the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado stated it might transfer ahead with a nearly two-month season.
But as they reopen, establishments are reckoning with sharp losses. As it celebrated the return of Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony stated its present working finances was $57.7 million, down from its prepandemic finances of over $100 million. The orchestra estimated that it has misplaced over $50 million in income within the final yr.
