Tanglewood 75th Anniversary
Tanglewood
Lenox, Massachusetts
Tanglewood, the premier summer festival in the United States, celebrated its 75th Anniversary on Saturday, July 14th.
Tanglewood originated in an unlikely alliance between Henry Kimball Hadley, an associate conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and Gertrude Robinson Smith, a New York socialite who summered in the Berkshires. Hadley was also a composer, whose opera Cleopatra’s Night, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, and disappeared into a black hole after seven performances. Robinson –Smith’s circle was wide. Including opera librettist Gertrude Stein and composer/conductor Nadia Boulanger.
Together Hadley and Smith created the first music festival in the Berkshires in a horse ring Hadley determined had perfect acoustics. Gertrude thought music would be ideal for the neighborhood farmers, but instead other socialites from New York who had homes in Stockbridge and Lenox, came in droves.
The only real complaint about Hadley’s programming was that selections from symphonies were thought to insult the sophistication of the listeners. Not so at the anniversary celebration, where bits of Rogers & Hammerstein and Haydn were served up.
James Taylor is a regular now at Tanglewood. Having fled his New England boarding school, where Mrs. Norman Rockwell taught for her entire career, Taylor has returned as a gracious and giving Tanglewood regular.
Emanuel Ax fell in love with the Berkshires and is a long time summer resident and supports the festival in many ways, but particularly as a performer. Yo-Yo Ma is another member of the Tanglewood family.
The exciting and musically rigorous Andris Nelsons, young conductor of the Birmingham 
Symphony Orchestra, took the stage for the wild and erotic Sarasate: Carmen Fantasy. Nelsons debut with the BSO came in New York early in the spring of 2011, when he gave a thrilling performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Annie Sophie Mutter accompanied on the violin.
Nelsons returned after intermission with the Symphony Orchestra for Ravel’s choreographic poem, La Valse. It is difficult to put Nelsons effect in words. With this great orchestra to work with him to bring forth everything a composition offers, musicians and conductor engage in a present search for the soul of the music. The music zings directly to the heart. Enough has already been said about how nice it would be to have Nelsons in Boston. He will be there in January for his first subscription series. If someone makes sure to serve him superior fresh sushi for breakfast, lunch and dinner, he may be seduced into a more regular friendship with one of the world’s very great orchestras.
David Zinman conducted the New York Philharmonic in a modern Beethoven Festival earlier this year. This evening, he brought together Peter Serkin, the Symphony, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and Music Center Fellows in an exuberant performance of Beethoven’s Fantasia in C Minor. In Zinman’s Tohhalle Concerts in Zurich dancing in the aisles would automatically follow the concert. The lovely lines of the chorale by Kuffner echoed in the night air: “accept you lovely souls, the gifts of beautiful art. If love and power join together, humanity is rewarded by God’s favor.” A celebration an extraordinary 75-year history.
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