BSO announces 2025 Tanglewood season

Boston Globe

30-01-2025

Music director Andris Nelsons, who took on the title of head of conducting at Tanglewood in 2024, will be on campus for the entire month of July, leading concerts with the BSO and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. The piano has a prominent presence during Nelsons's programs this summer; he's slated to conduct the BSO in piano concertos with soloists Daniil Trifonov (July 5); Yefim Bronfman (July 6); Seong-Jin Cho (July 12); Yuja Wang (July 20); Lang Lang (July 27); and Ax (July 26), who will be performing in the world premiere of Williams's new piano concerto. Nelsons will also lead a program featuring the BSO debut of Spanish violinist María Dueñas, who won first prize at the 2021 Menuhin Competition (July 25).
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Andris Nelsons conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Yuja Wang at Tanglewood in 2024.
Hilary Scott
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Opera fans will find plenty of interest this season. Nelsons leads a full concert performance of Puccini's 'Tosca,' featuring soprano Kristine Opolais and bass-baritone Bryn Terfel reprising the roles of Tosca and Scarpia respectively from the BSO's 2017 Tanglewood performance of the opera's Act II. Tenor SeokJong Baek makes his BSO and Tanglewood debuts as Cavaradossi (July 19). Nelsons also conducts a 'theatrical concert' of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet,' with actors from Concert Theatre Works directed by Bill Barclay and music to include Prokofiev (July 11); the second such collaboration for the orchestra after last March's take on 'Peer Gynt'. Later, in Ozawa Hall, American Modern Opera Company presents Matthew Aucoin's 'Music for New Bodies,' with libretto by poet Jorie Graham and staging by operatic maverick Peter Sellars. (Aug. 7)
The BSO teams up with several impressive pairs of guest conductor and soloist in the Shed, including Elim Chan with Leonidas Kavakos (Aug. 2), Andrés Orozco-Estrada and Joshua Bell (Aug. 8), and Dima Slobodeniouk with Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Aug. 17). Esa-Pekka Salonen makes his first Tanglewood appearance since 1985, conducting both the BSO (July 13) and Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra (July 14). The orchestra's assistant conductors also get in on the action; Samy Rachid leads the American premiere of Camille Pépin's 'Un monde nouveau' before Yo-Yo Ma joins him and the orchestra for Saint-Saens's Cello Concerto No. 1 (Aug. 10), and freshman assistant Anna Handler is slated to debut on a program featuring Augustin Hadelich (Aug. 16).
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The Boston Pops also have their share of events at the Shed. Conductor Keith Lockhart and the Pops host Broadway stars Sutton Foster and Kelli O'Hara in a concert inspired by Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett's 1962 special on CBS (July 18); later, Lockhart's 30th anniversary with the Pops is feted with a blowout concert, the lineup of guests including Bernadette Peters, Ben Folds, and Lynn Ahrens. (Note: The Tanglewood concert does not feature the same guests as Lockhart's 30th anniversary concert with the Pops in June at Symphony Hall.) Lockhart also conducts John Williams' Film Night (Aug. 9), while actor and conductor Damon Gupton makes his Tanglewood debut leading the orchestra in Williams's score for 'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi', performed live along with the film (Aug. 1). The BSO, Pops, and Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra unite for Tanglewood on Parade (Aug. 5).
Left to right: Leonidas Kavakos, Emanuel Ax, Antoine Tamestit, and Yo-Yo Ma performing Dvorak's Piano Quartet No. 2 at Tanglewood.
Hilary Scott
On the chamber music front, the season's buzziest event will likely be the all-Beethoven quartet concert at the Shed with Ma, Ax, Kavakos, and violist Antoine Tamestit (Aug. 3). Ma and Ax have been friends and creative partners nearly all their lives, while Kavakos first collaborated with them at Tanglewood in 2014 and has been regularly doing so ever since; the three sold out the Shed in 2023 with another all-Beethoven program. Tamestit joined those same three for a stunning performance of Dvořák's Piano Quartet No. 2 in a 2022 'Pathways from Prague' program curated by Ax, so this summer's event — featuring Shai Wosner's arrangements of 'Leonore' Overture No. 3 and the Symphony No. 3 , as well as the Trio No. 4 for piano, violin, and cello — is a sequel to that as well.
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Ozawa Hall and the Linde Center for Music and Learning host bountiful chamber music throughout the summer as well. Several BSO guest soloists will also have Ozawa appearances, including Cho (July 13), Terfel (July 15), and Ma, who appears with string quartet Brooklyn Rider in their debut (Aug. 13). British vocal ensemble The Sixteen makes its Tanglewood debut with founding director (and Handel and Haydn Society conductor laureate) Harry Christophers in tow (Aug. 14). The TMC's Festival of Contemporary Music is this year directed by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, whose portrait album '
James Taylor performing in Tanglewood's Koussevitzky Music Shed in 2023.
Hilary Scott
The Popular Artists series lineup has not been completely announced, but so far, it includes 'A Prairie Home Companion' with host Garrison Keillor (June 21), a live recording session of NPR's news quiz 'Wait Wait. . . . Don't Tell Me!' with host Peter Sagal (Aug. 28), and a concert by Bonnie Raitt (Aug. 31). As per usual, James Taylor and his All-Star Band take over the Shed for two nights around Independence Day (July 3 & 4). Expect fireworks and heavy traffic.
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Tickets will be available for purchase on March 6 for everything except Taylor's dates, which are on sale now.
TANGLEWOOD
Lenox. Late June through Aug. 31. 888-266-1200, www.tanglewood.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at