Composers Datebook

Hadley, Thompson, et. al. in the Berkshires


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Tanglewood is one of America's most famous summer-time classical music festivals, and can boast a long and impressive list of premieres and performances by famous American composers and conductors. It takes place each year around this time in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Tanglewood has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home for more than 60 years, but it wasn't the symphony's first location in the Berkshires. In August of 1936, the first in a three-concert series was performed at Holmwood, a former Vanderbilt estate. And, in fact, the origins of this annual Festival actually began not with the Boston Symphony, but with the New York Philharmonic, which, on today's date in 1934 inaugurated the Berkshire Symphonic Festival in Stockbridge. That summer-time concert series was led by the American composer and conductor, Henry Hadley. When the New York Philharmonic dropped the series two years later, the Boston Symphony picked up on the idea. In short order, the great Russian-born conductor of the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky, moved the festival to Tanglewood and expanded the concert series into a kind of intensive summer camp for young musicians and composers. Among those who particularly benefited were two young composer-conductors named Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss. In 1940, the Berkshire Music Center (now the Tanglewood Music Center) opened, and to mark the occasion, American composer Randall Thompson's famous choral work titled Alleluia received its premiere performance.
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