His uplifting Tanglewood 2020 solo recital program reflects the imaginative range of his musical interests. Shaham plays works by three living American composers, including two written for him: Boston-based composer Scott Wheeler’s Isolation Rag, written at Shaham’s request as a response to daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic; and two stylish dance movements from William Bolcom’s Suite No. 2 for solo violin. Chicago Symphony Orchestra violist Max Raimi’s Anger Management is a short and virtuosic etude. Anchoring this program is…

Highlights of the String Quartet Seminar Hosted by Norman Fischer, with special guest Astrid Schween Each summer, TMC String Fellows begin their Tanglewood journey with the String Quartet Seminar, an intensive workshop exploring landmarks of the repertoire through coachings, masterclasses, and a marathon performance of three concerts over two days—the quality of which belies the fact that these musicians have been playing together for little more than a week. Featuring performances from 2016 to 2019, this broadcast exhibits the seminar’s…

Canadian conductor Jacques Lacombe leads this All-American program to open the BSO’s 2015 season at Tanglewood. He is joined by pianist Kirill Gerstein, a frequent BSO guest and an alumnus of Boston’s Berklee College of Music with an affinity for both classical and jazz idioms, for Gershwin’s exuberant, jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in F. The Obie-award-winning actor John Douglas Thompson narrated Aaron Copland’s tribute to the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Opening this concert is Boston-based Pulitzer Prize-winning…

This series of archival broadcasts from the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra begins with Wagner’s iconic Ride of the Valkyrie—really just a teaser for the last broadcast in this series, which features the complete third act of its parent opera.

The English pianist Paul Lewis, in recent years a frequent recitalist and soloist with orchestra at Tanglewood, is an acknowledged master of the Classical-era music of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. For this recital performed in London’s venerable Wigmore Hall, he performs one of the pillars of that repertoire: Beethoven’s 1823 Diabelli Variations. The thirty-three variations take the jaunty waltz theme into realms its composer Diabelli could never have foreseen, using it as the basis for a spectacularly varied landscape of…

This program of horn-centric music features not only the standard orchestral French horn but also its cousin, the long Alphorn of Swiss, German, and Austrian tradition. BSO Associate Principal Horn Richard Sebring and colleagues perform Sebring’s his own new composition for alphorns to start this program. The second Sebring work is a duet for horn and harp with former TMC Fellow Charles Overton. Standard-repertoire horn pieces by Schumann, Dukas, and Mozart—including the substantial Quintet in E-flat for horn and strings—complete…

Tanglewood mainstay Emanuel Ax, who made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut at Tanglewood in August 1978, performs music in which he is an acknowledged master, an all-Beethoven program featuring two of the composer’s earliest sonatas.

Music for Woodwinds and Brass Hosted by Norman Fischer, with special guest Tom Siders Many TMC Woodwind and Brass Fellows come to Tanglewood expressly to play in the orchestra under such conductors as BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons and to benefit from the mentorship of seasoned BSO musicians. But the study of chamber, ensemble, and new music is another important part of their summer. Brass and Woodwind Fellows begin their summers playing in smaller wind and brass ensemble music, bonding…

Hosted by Jamie Bernstein BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts this August 1, 2015, concert in the Koussevitzky Music Shed with three French soloists—the brothers Renaud and Gautier Capuçon and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet—in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, a work that rewards a sense of competition and play among its three solo parts. Beethoven wrote this unusual concerto in 1804 purportedly for his patron and friend the Archduke Rudolph to perform as piano soloist with his private orchestra. Maestro Nelsons also leads…

An orchestra needs a conductor, right? Not always, at the TMC.

Recorded at Concertgebouw, Amsterdam Hosted by Karen Allen   The Dutch piano duo of brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen perform a recital of music for piano four-hands from the stage of Amsterdam’s wonderful Concertgebouw. Four-hand keyboard music epitomizes at-home music-making with family and friends, and all of these pieces stem from that tradition. Mozart spent his childhood performing piano four-hands music with his sister Nännerl; his D major sonata, written when he was 16, reflects this intimacy. Schubert’s warmly passionate Fantasy…

Hosted by Lauren Ambrose American composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s music draws on and transcends her rich cultural heritage, which includes Peruvian, Chinese, and Eastern European Jewish elements. Performed by BSO violinist Lucia Lin, the first movement, “Prayer,” of Frank’s big solo violin Suite Mestiza was inspired by Peruvian religious songs on Quechua texts. Lin and BSO cellist Owen Young perform Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello, a varied, full-scale, four-movement work composed in memory of his colleague Claude Debussy. The German-born…

Hosted by Nicole Cabell Eminent violinist Pinchas Zukerman—a frequent performer at Tanglewood with the BSO as conductor as well as violin and viola soloist—is joined by his wife and regular recital partner, cellist Amanda Forsyth in music from four different countries.

Highlights of the Vocal Arts Program Hosted by Norman Fischer, with special guest Dawn Upshaw Under the leadership of soprano Dawn Upshaw, the TMC Vocal Arts Program offers singers diverse projects in the song, chamber, and contemporary repertoire, all of which are featured in this broadcast of performances from 2015 to 2019. Vocal Fellows begin their summer studying Bach’s foundational cantatas under composer and Bach specialist John Harbison. Art song projects are drawn from both the old canon—like those of…

Hosted by Jamie Bernstein This warm and engaging August 17, 2013, program, led by BSO Conductor Emeritus Bernard Haitink, features the German violinist Isabelle Faust in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, nicknamed “Turkish” for the fiery music in its finale. Mozart wrote all five of his violin concertos in the mid-1770s, when he was in his late teens. Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony is the last of the trio of symphonies with vocal movements using texts from the German folk poetry…

This broadcast begins with a performance from the TMCO under Andris Nelsons with pianist Paul Lewis, a great friend of the BSO who would have been the 2020 Koussevitzky Artist at Tanglewood.

Recorded at Studio E, Linde Center for Music and Learning at Tanglewood Hosted by Karen Allen Brooklyn Rider has reinvigorated the venerable string quartet ensemble through its vibrant approach to both traditional and new repertoire presented with joy, energy, and the precision of virtuosos. Three of the works on this program were included on Brooklyn Rider’s March 2020 recording “Healing Modes.” The third movement, “Holy Song of Thanksgiving for a Convalescent,” from Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, alternates hymnlike…

UPDATE: The in-person Tanglewood Gala on Friday, July 24 has been rescheduled for a virtual Tanglewood Gala celebrating the 100th birthday of Isaac Stern on Thursday, July 23, 2020. For more details please email [email protected] Tanglewood Gala, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Isaac Stern’s birth with Andris Nelsons, conducting. Augustin Hadelich, violin; BEETHOVEN Romance No. 1 in G, for violin and orchestra; DUTILLEUX L’Arbre des songes, for violin and orchestra; BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique.

Hosted by Lauren Ambrose The violin—whose presence by sheer force of numbers dominates the orchestral stage—is the focus of this chamber music program by BSO musicians. Victor Romanul plays three four solo selections, including one of the single most challenging pieces in the repertoire, the Chaconne from Bach’s D minor partita. Tatiana Dimitriades performs two works for violin and piano: Mendelssohn’s early Sonata in F and important American composer William Grant Still’s beautifully lullaby “Mother and Child” from his 1943…

Hosted by Nicole Cabell Italian-born Austrian violinist Austrian Hadelich and American pianist Orion Weiss, a former Tanglewood Fellow, began touring together as a duo in 2019.

Hosted by Norman Fischer, with special guest Alan Smith TMC Fellows Piano Fellows at the TMC wear many hats. They work with their colleagues in the string program on such core works as Beethoven’s noble Archduke Trio, or in the too-often-overlooked territory of American Romanticism, as in Amy Beach’s Piano Quartet. They work together, making eye contact across their pianos, aligning gestures and timing in duos like Stravinsky’s Sonata for Two Pianos. They work with living composers as well: in 2018 Composition…

Hosted by Jamie Bernstein The effortlessly musical, multitalented André Previn—known as a jazz and classical pianist, film, stage, and concert composer, and a conductor of the world’s greatest orchestras—had a long, congenial relationship with the BSO and Tanglewood. This 2007 concert touches on music closest to his heart: the Viennese classicists Mozart and Haydn, and the colorful, early 20th-century music of Ravel. Maestro Previn is joined by German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott as soloist in Haydn’s jovial and lyrical Cello Concerto…

This program celebrates three titans of Tanglewood. Boston native and Harvard graduate Leonard Bernstein was a member of the TMC’s inaugural class of 1940 and the protégé of BSO Music Director Serge Koussevitzky as well as of Aaron Copland, the TMC’s Head of Faculty. Bernstein’s 1971 musico-theatrical work Mass, from which these Meditations are taken, was written for the opening of the Kennedy Center, and this performance features another Tanglewood icon: cellist Yo-Yo Ma. John Williams served as conductor of the…

Presented by Kathryn L. Libin (This session marks the first collaboration in a multi-year partnership with the House of Lobkowicz)

Thomas Wilkins, conductor

This is an online event. Founded by Yo-Yo Ma, Silkroad Ensemble is the performing dimension of Silkroad, an initiative advocating and developing global cultural communication through music, art, and education. Tanglewood is a spiritual home for the ensemble, which first convened here two decades ago. In these performances newly recorded from Tanglewood’s Linde Center and elsewhere, Silkroad’s multitalented artists from several different countries and musical backgrounds team up to create works blending and highlighting both their individual artistry and collaborative spontaneity,…

Recorded at Studio E, Linde Center for Music and Learning at Tanglewood Hosted by Karen Allen Founded in 2000 by Yo-Yo Ma, Silkroad Ensemble celebrates its 20th anniversary this year as the performing dimension of Silkroad, an initiative advocating and developing global cultural communication through music, art, and education. The flexible and continually changing musicians of the ensemble embrace and share music from around the world. Seven—two pairs and one trio—of Silkroad’s multitalented artists—working with instruments as diverse as Celtic harp,…

Hosted by Lauren Ambrose Three BSO violists perform on his program of all 20th-century masterworks. Both the English composer Rebecca Clarke’s and the German Paul Hindemith’s sonatas date from 1919, and both are staples of the viola-piano repertoire. The eminent American composer-conductor Ulysses Kay’s musical voice has roots deep in the American experience. He wrote his Sonatine for Viola and Piano in 1939. The great Italian composer Luciano Berio’s Naturale creates a remarkable landscape for viola and percussion evoking Italian folk song…

Hosted by Nicole Cabell Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, both consummate solo artists, together form one of the closest musical friendships and chamber music partnerships of all time.

Hosted by Norman Fischer It is the tremendous talent collected at the TMC that allows monumental works of the chamber music repertoire to be put together in short periods of time and to such a high degree of excellence. Faculty member Andrew Jennings prepared both Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 135—the slow movement of which receives a performance of miraculous tenderness, with only the softest of touch—and Second String Force by TMC faculty member Joan Tower, performed here by New Fromm Player Chi…

Hosted by Jamie Bernstein Seiji Ozawa’s brilliant 29-year tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra ended with the completion of the 2001-2002 Symphony Hall season. His history with the orchestra and with Tanglewood was marked in a weekend of “Celebrating Seiji!” events, culminating in this performance in the Koussevitzky Music Shed. Maestro Ozawa leads a scintillating performance of a work strongly identified with the BSO’s legacy: Berlioz’s kaleidoscopic, virtuosic Symphonie fantastique. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus and five outstanding vocalists,…

Head of the TMC Composition Program Michael Gandolfi was himself a TMC Fellow in 1986, an experience he regards crucial in his development.

This is an online event. The Danish String Quartet (three Danes and a Norwegian), have been playing as an ensemble for over a decade and have become one of the most acclaimed chamber music ensembles in the world. Their repertoire spans the great core quartets of Haydn and Beethoven through modern works as well as arrangements of Scandinavian folk songs. Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets are one of the most important bodies of chamber music of the 20th century. Written…

Hosted by Karen Allen The Danish String Quartet (three Danes and a Norwegian), have been playing as an ensemble for over a decade and have become one of the most acclaimed chamber music ensembles in the world. Their repertoire spans the great core quartets of Haydn and Beethoven through modern works as well as arrangements of Scandinavian folk songs. Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets are one of the most important bodies of chamber music of the 20th century. Written in 1964…

Hosted by Lauren Ambrose Along with classical music, BSO violinist Bonnie Bewick has delved deeply into fiddle music from around the world, including traditional American, Scotch and Irish reels, and music of other European traditions. This program of traditional and folk-style pieces includes some of her own arrangements and compositions.

Hosted by Nicole Cabell The Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov is as well-known for his searching, thoughtful programs as he is for his remarkable virtuosity and sensitivity as a performer. Bach’s The Art of Fugue demands all of a performer’s resources. Written and compiled near the end of the composer’s life, The Art of Fugue is a collection of diverse pieces based on a single D minor theme. That theme is reversed, inverted, and otherwise reworked to create a brilliant kaleidoscope of contrapuntal mastery. Like The…

This is an online event. Hosted by Norman Fischer, with special guest Michael Gandolfi Tanglewood’s longtime commitment to new music reaches its peak each summer with the Festival of Contemporary Music, a focal point not only for presenting this music for audiences, but for immersing TMC Fellows in the diverse music of the present and recent past. In 2018 and 2019, BSO Artistic Partner and musical polymath Thomas Adès served as Director of the FCM, and all three of Mr.…

Highlights from the Festival of Contemporary Music Hosted by Norman Fischer, with special guest Michael Gandolfi Tanglewood’s longtime commitment to new music reaches its peak each summer with the Festival of Contemporary Music, a focal point not only for presenting this music for audiences, but for immersing TMC Fellows in the diverse music of the present and recent past. In 2018 and 2019, BSO Artistic Partner and musical polymath Thomas Adès served as Director of the FCM, and all three…

Hosted by Jamie Bernstein BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons has an affinity for the grandest, most ambitious symphonic repertoire. Here he leads a stunning performance of Mahler’s biggest and most varied work, the Third Symphony, the second piece in the symphonic trilogy using text from the folk-poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Boy’s Magic Horn”). The wonderful Susan Graham is the mezzo-soprano soloist in the fourth and fifth movements; she is joined by women’s chorus and children’s chorus in the fifth-movement Wunderhorn setting “Es…

In 2018 and 2019, the Director of Tanglewood’s world-renowned Festival of Contemporary Music was BSO Artistic Partner Thomas Adès, who has achieved fame as a composer, pianist, and conductor.

Hosted by Karen Allen Established in 1964, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players is an immensely flexible ensemble that includes first-chair players from the orchestra’s wind and string sections along with guest performers from within and outside of the orchestra. Poulenc’s Trio for winds and piano, a model of neoclassical style and French lyricism, opens the program, which continues with four solo works. BSO Principal Flute Elizabeth Rowe performs innovative flutist-composer Allison Loggins-Hull’s evocative Homeland which explores racial injustice and the concept of belonging.…

Hosted by Lauren Ambrose This concert opens with Beethoven’s String Trio in G, one of a set of three string trios representing the composer’s most important and substantial chamber music works of the 1790s. The concert continues with a potpourri of music for low brass instruments ranging from Gabrieli’s late 16th-century canzone and Johann Schein’s early-17th-century Padoua (Pavane) to a new work by West Virginia-born composer and jazz pianist Kevin Day.

Hosted by Nicole Cabell American pianist Conrad Tao made his Tanglewood debut as soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G in August 2019. Known as a composer as well as a pianist, Tao shows the breadth of his musical interests in this recital of music at the center of which is Beethoven’s towering Tempest Sonata, which exploits the full range and power of the piano. The shorter 20th- and 21st-century works flanking the sonata include two studies by the important American composer…

TMC Chamber Music Hosted by Norman Fischer, with special guest Michael Nock The finale to this series of Sunday morning broadcasts is bounded by two pillars: the C major Piano Trio of Brahms, about which the composer (modestly) wrote to his publisher that “you very likely have not published its equal in the last ten years,” and third of Beethoven’s Op. 59 Razumovskyquartets in which he expanded the proportions and gravity of the quartet genre beyond anything that come before. In…

Hosted by Jamie Bernstein.

During the 2019 season, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra scaled a musical Everest under the baton of Andris Nelsons: Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre—three acts in four hours, performed in three concerts over two days—a taxing yet extraordinary experience for the Fellows.

This is an online event. Recorded at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco. Hosted by Karen Allen Longtime BSO collaborator Garrick Ohlsson, who performed all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas at Tanglewood in 2006, performs two of the series in a recital from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Beethoven dedicated his two-movement 1809 F-sharp sonata, Op. 78, to one of his students among the nobility, the Countess Therese von Brunsvik. At the other end of the spectrum from…

Recorded at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Hosted by Karen Allen Longtime BSO collaborator Garrick Ohlsson, who performed all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas at Tanglewood in 2006, performs two of the series in a recital from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Beethoven dedicated his two-movement 1809 F-sharp sonata, Op. 78, to one of his students among the nobility, the Countess Therese von Brunsvik. At the other end of the spectrum from this lovely and brief two-movement…

Hosted by Lauren Ambrose BSO violinist Julianne Lee plays a short, energetic piece written by another violinist, Daniel Bernard Roumain, his Filter for solo violin. Lee performs with BSO violist Rebecca Gitter in Mozart’s Duo in G, one of two duos the composer wrote as a favor for his friend Michael Haydn—Joseph’s brother—who fell ill before fulfilling a commission. The G major duo is a substantial work of grace and elegance. Franz Schubert’s late string quartets rank among his greatest works. His…

Hosted by Nicole Cabell The outstanding violinist Joshua Bell and acclaimed pianist Jeremy Denk, longtime collaborators, bring their insightful artistry to bear on two pieces central to the violin-and-piano repertoire: Beethoven’s Spring and Kreutzer sonatas. Rooted in the Classical world of Mozart, the Spring Sonata of 1801 is one of the most beloved violin sonatas of all time. The optimism and lyricism of its melodies likely suggested the sonata’s nickname, which was not Beethoven’s own. The Kreutzer Sonata, composed three years later, is a contrastingly dramatic and intense…

Hosted by Jamie Bernstein For decades, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season has concluded with a joyous performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. This concert features the orchestra’s most recent performance of that iconic work, led by frequent BSO guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero and featuring four outstanding American soloists along with, as always, our own Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Best known for its glorious theme-and-variations finale setting Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” the Ninth Symphony was Beethoven’s final completed orchestral score,…