LENOX — After waiting it out for over a year, pandemic-weary friends of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are searching for their Tanglewood picnic baskets in anticipation of the BSO’s July return to their summer home in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts. Today, the orchestra announced programming for the 2021 Tanglewood season, to run July 9 through August 16.
Andris Nelsons will lead eight orchestra programs this summer in a reduced, six-week concert season that amounts to about half of the festival’s usual offerings. BSO concerts will take place Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons, with Friday evenings reserved for Boston Pops concerts and guest chamber music artists.
Conductors appearing at Tanglewood in addition to Nelsons will include Anna Rakitina, Thomas Adès, Keith Lockhart, John Williams, Herbert Blomstedt, Alan Gilbert, and trumpeter Byron Stripling.
Guest artists will include Emanuel Ax, Lisa Batiashvili, Yefim Bronfman, Karina Canellakis, Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony Marwood, Wynton Marsalis, Baiba Skride, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Daniil Trifonov.
Tanglewood’s 2021 programs will feature works by Beethoven, Brahms, Copland, Dvořák, Gershwin, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Ravel, Schumann, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky appearing alongside music by Thomas Adès, Iman Habibi, Vijay Iyer, Hannah Kendall, Elena Langer, Missy Mazzoli, Jessie Montgomery, Carlos Simon, and Mary Lou Williams. Most notably, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter will give the world premiere of John Williams’ Violin Concerto No. 2.
BSO Artistic Advisor Thomas Adès will once again direct Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music. The 2021 FCM runs July 25–26 this year and features living composers Andrew Haig, Jeffrey Mumford, Per Nørgård, Andrew Norman, Steve Reich, Sean Shepherd, Kaija Saariaho, Xinyang Wang, and Judith Weir, as well as Kurtág and Ligeti.
About half the usual number of Tanglewood Music Center fellows will be on hand this summer to participate in concert performances (including the FCM). The truly big difference this year? They get to play all their concerts, including chamber music, in the Koussevitzky Music Shed. (For that matter, so will all of the summer’s guest chamber music artists.) An Ozawa Hall-sized crowd rattling around the Shed may seem unappealing when you picture it, but think about it: If you were a TMC fellow with aspirations to some day join the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where would you rather play? And in which venue would your family members prefer to photograph you? It’s the photo op of a lifetime, even for established acts like the Knights that can fill Ozawa Hall but maybe not the Shed. And once the record shows that your Tanglewood debut took place in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, you have bragging rights in perpetuity.
Why is this worth mentioning? Because, as it is, in any given year, TMC performances offer some of Tanglewood’s most thrilling moments. They’ll be no less exciting in a larger venue. And don’t worry about the acoustics. The Shed (as Yo-Yo Ma and James Taylor will tell you) is perfectly suited for chamber music.
Of course, the Tanglewood Learning Institute will be holding performance events this summer, and yes, it’s true that TLI has its own facilities — the four Linde Center buildings. However, the Linde Center lacks open-air performance areas, partly, one might imagine, because the Koussevitzky Music Shed, little more than a stone’s throw away, can safely accommodate a Linde Center crowd many times over. In any case, the Shed is perfect for TLI events.
Tanglewood tickets go on sale to the general public — alongside the launch of contactless mobile ticketing — May 17 at 10 a.m. HERE or by calling the BSO box office at (888) 266-1200.
Updates to the 2021 Tanglewood Popular Artist Series will be announced at a later date. The site is targeting late August and early September for these concerts. Although dates for specific concerts may be announced by artists as part of their touring plans, Tanglewood ticket information will be announced as health and safety guidelines are established for late-summer concerts by the Centers for Disease Control, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the BSO’s management and team of advisors.
