I am here to remind you if you can’t listen to the Boston Symphony Orchestra live while picnicking on the lawn at Tanglewood, you can still picnic on a lawn somewhere and perhaps even listen to a BSO concert.
The announcement was a devastating blow to the region's economy, which is already reeling from the effects of the economic shutdown and the recently announced season cancellations from Jacob's Pillow, Shakespeare & Company and the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
“It is our obligation to our audiences, musicians, and staff to do everything we can to ensure everyone’s safety and well-being during the unprecedented time of this pandemic.”
Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart
Orchestra's founder Henry Lee Higginson's desire was to make great music accessible to "any one and everyone likely to care for such things," and the BSO in recent years seems to have re-doubled its efforts to make Higginson's vision a reality
The main reason they're giving a concert Sunday, March 10, at Darrow School is because they enjoy performing music we usually don't associate with the BSO: folk, especially in the traditional Celtic style.
Although one must be wary of the word “definitive” when describing any musical performance, overenthusiastic critics (there are a few) must be forgiven if they use such language to describe the orchestra’s widely praised Shostakovitch performances.
Under Ken-David Masur’s direction on Saturday, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 crackled with such vitality and force that past performances of the work now seem pale and tentative by comparison.
"My Tanglewood roommate, James Tranks, an African American double bass player from Philadelphia, walked into a barbershop in Great Barrington which immediately pulled down its blinds and told him the barbershop was closed. The same thing happened at a second barbershop in Great Barrington shortly thereafter and in Lee the following day."
-- Tanglewood Fellow Jim Levinson, recalling an incident in the summer of 1961
I have always suffered from lack of skill in the management of form. Only persistent labor has at last permitted me to achieve a form that in some degree corresponds to the content.
-- Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky
