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Tanglewood, Manchester Music Festival Season Begin
By Stephen Dankner, iBerkshires Columnist
11:42AM / Wednesday, July 06, 2016
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The Mexican Folklore ensemble Tembembe Ensamble Continuo will join the BSO in a program of music inspired by the 'discovery' of the New World at Tanglewood this week.

Tanglewood opens its classical season this week this Friday, July 8, but there’s still diverse programming, with stimulating concerts in the Shed and in Ozawa Hall.

As always, there’s music to suit every taste: from a brass extravaganza to early music from Africa and the New World; from the Boston Pops featuring writer/director/song stylist Seth MacFarlane to the superlative Emerson String Quartet performing classic Haydn and Berg quartets and much more.

Why go? Simply because the amazing range of great music can, and should, be enjoyed by all music lovers. Here are this week’s listings.

• Wednesday July 6, 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall: Tanglewood Music Center vocal students will perform music by women composers Lili Boulanger, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Rebecca Clarke.

• Thursday, July 7, 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall: An evening of cross-cultural early music led by Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI, and joined by the Mexican Folklore ensemble Tembembe Ensamble Continuo in a program of music inspired by the “discovery” of the New World. The program will explore the connections and interactions among the disparate musical traditions of Africa, indigenous Creole music and South American folkloristic styles.

• Friday, July 8, 8 p.m. in the Shed: “Opening Night at Tanglewood”: The BSO, led by conductor Jacques Lacombe, and with guest artist violinist Joshua Bell, present a brilliant program of Ravel, Saint-Saens (the Violin Concerto No. 3) and Prokofiev’s powerful Fifth Symphony.

• Saturday, July 9, 8 p.m. in the Shed: Mraestro Lacombe returns to lead a second consecutive program with the BSO. Debussy’s fabled symphonic poem “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and Ravel’s atmospheric and exotic “Daphnis and Chloe, Suite No. 2,” two quintessential French impressionist works that are specialties of the orchestra. For the second half, Maestro Lacombe and the BSO will be joined by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for the drama and the spectacle of Carl Orff’s exhilarating “Carmina Burana.”

• Sunday, July 10, 2:30 p.m. in the Shed: Famed actor, writer, director, and vocalist Seth MacFarlane joins Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops, performing both classics from the Great American Songbook. Mr. MacFarlane will perform songs including “Ol’ Man River,” and the jazz standard “Autumn in New York,” from his recent Grammy-nominated album, “No One Ever Tells You.”

• Tuesday, July 12, 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall: The celebrated Emerson String Quartet returns to Tanglewood and begins a two-part Ozawa Hall celebration of its 40th anniversary season. For the first concert, the ensemble performs all six of Haydn’s Op. 76 string quartets, composed between 1796 and 1797. Haydn pioneered the string quartet as an artistically significant and influential medium and Op. 76 is the last completed set of his several seminal collections in the genre, including some of his most advanced, ambitious, and dazzling works. The following evening,

• Wednesday, July 13. 8 p.m. in Ozawa Hall: The legendary American soprano and Metropolitan Opera superstar Renée Fleming joins the Emerson String Quartet to continue and conclude its 40th anniversary celebration at Tanglewood. Ms. Fleming takes the stage with the Quartet for Alban Berg’s unequaled masterpiece - “Lyric Suite,” and for the “Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Op. 52,” a work by Berg’s contemporary Egon Wellesz that sets German translations of Barrett Browning’s poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke. Opening the program is Brahms’s passionate Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2. These two Emerson Quartet evenings will be incredibly special - a chamber music lover’s dream come true.

Tickets for all Tanglewood events can be purchased online at tanglewood.org, via SymphonyCharge, 888-266-1200 or 888-266-1200, and at the Tanglewood box office located at the main gate, on West Street in Lenox. For further information call, 413- 637-1600.

 

Manchester Music Festival

On Thursday, July 7, at 7:30 p.m., the Manchester Music Festival presents its first concert of the summer, titled “If It Sounds Good…” Works to be performed are by Johannes Brahms, Joaquin Turina and Duke Ellington, among others. Featured performers include guest artist soprano Danielle Talamantes, with violinists Joana Genova and Austin Hartman, violist Ariel Rudiakov, cellist Yehuda Hanani and pianist Adam Neiman.

The concert will be held at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, 930 Southern Vermont Arts Center Drive, Manchester Center, Vt. For tickets, call 802-362-1956 or visit www.mmfvt.org.

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