Opening Night at Tanglewood with Andris Nelsons
Date/Time
Location
Tanglewood (297 West St., Lenox, MA 01240, Lenox MA)
Andris Nelsons, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, opens Tanglewood’s 2022 season with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and baritone Jack Canfield, beginning with a benediction by Leonard Bernstein, a setting in Hebrew for baritone that was the composer’s last work with orchestra.
Leonard Bernstein — Opening Prayer
Leonard Bernstein — Symphony No. 2, Age of Anxiety
Igor Stravinsky — Rite of Spring
Andris Nelsons conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood.
Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, Age of Anxietycomes from early in his career: he was piano soloist in the BSO’s world premiere performance of this jazz-inflected work inspired by a poem by W.H. Auden.
In its orchestral finesse and raw power, Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary 1913 ballet score The Rite of Spring still astonishes after more than 100 years.
Ticket includes admission to 6 p.m. Prelude Concert — tonight with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Martinu — Three Madrigals for violin and viola
Peter Child — Occasions for violin and viola
James Lee III — Piano Trio No. 3, Tones of Clay
Mary Ferrillo — viola
The Calyx Piano Trio — Catherine French on violin, Jennifer Lucht on cello and Nina Ferrigno on piano
Jack Canfield, baritone, makes his BSO debuttonight. Canfield is one of Opera Idaho’s “Emerging Artists” for the 2021-2022 season. Originally from Atlanta, GA, he studied with John T. Gates at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI and Peter Volpe at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. This past July, he sang the role of Hannah (Before) in Laura Kaminsky’s As One with Opera Maine. Other recent roles include Count Almaviva in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and John Brooke in Adamo’s Little Women. In 2015, he was a recipient of the Thomas J. Watson fellowship, which allowed him to study indigenous song traditions in the Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Norway and Russia.
For more than three decades, Jean-Yves Thibaudet has performed world-wide, recorded more than 50 albums, and built a reputation as one of today’s finest pianists. From the start of his career, he delighted in music beyond the standard repertoire, from jazz to opera, which he transcribed himself to play on the piano. His profound professional friendships crisscross the globe and have led to spontaneous and fruitful collaborations in film, fashion, and visual art.
Thibaudet has a lifelong passion for education and fostering young musical talent. He is the first-ever Artist-in-Residence at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, where he makes his home. In 2017, the school announced the Jean-Yves Thibaudet Scholarships, funded by members of Colburn’s donor community, to provide aid for Music Academy students, whom Thibaudet will select for the merit-based awards, regardless of their instrument choice.
The 15th music director in the orchestra’s history, Andris Nelsons made his BSO debut at Carnegie Hall in March 2011, his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, and his BSO subscription series debut in January 2013. He has led the orchestra on three European tours and one of Japan; a scheduled February 2020 tour to East Asia was canceled due to the COVID-19 emergency.
In the pandemic-affected 2020-2021 BSO season, Mr. Nelsons led the BSO in six of the fifteen concerts streamed as part of the orchestra’s BSO NOW virtual season recorded in Symphony Hall. The diverse repertoire ranged from Beethoven symphonies and music of Schumann and Brahms to several recent works by leading young American composers.
His BSO repertoire in the 2021-2022 season ranges from favorites by Rachmaninoff and Sibelius to world and American premieres of BSO-commissioned works by HK Gruber, Julia Adolphe, Jörg Widmann, Unsuk Chin, and Kaija Saariaho. This season also marks the culmination of Mr. Nelsons’ multi-season joint project with the BSO and GHO to perform and record major works of Richard Strauss, to be released by Deutsche Grammophon.