This Weekend's Programs in Brief
August 22-24, 2025
Our final orchestral weekend of the Tanglewood season starts with a celebration of Keith Lockhart’s 30-year tenure with the Boston Pops — a remarkable achievement and one that has made Keith one of the most recognizable faces in classical music. Many of Keith’s longtime collaborators join him and the Pops for this special concert that includes video tributes and a few surprises.
The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, James Burton, conductor, is featured in all three concerts, including all four works in the Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts of Saturday and Sunday. These pieces all explore aspects of spirituality and mysticism, albeit not all in the traditional sense. On Saturday, Kazuki Yamada leads the devoutly Catholic French composer Francis Poulenc’s Gloria, which was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation. The BSO gave the world premiere of this piece under Charles Munch in January 1961 and later recorded it under Seiji Ozawa’s direction. Kansas native Raquel González makes her BSO debut as soprano soloist in this performance. Yamada also leads the BSO in English composer Gustav Holst’s kaleidoscopic and dramatic The Planets, inspired by the planets’ astrological personalities. Sopranos and altos of the chorus add otherworldly mystery to the final movement, Neptune.
Sunday’s concert features the Boston Symphony Orchestra debut of famed conductor Zubin Mehta, who was a Tanglewood Music Center conducting student in 1958. He led the TMC Orchestra on several occasions that summer and has also led the New York Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic orchestras in the Shed, but this will be his first time on the podium with the BSO. He leads our traditional BSO season-ending performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Opening the concert is the world premiere of Boston Symphony Orchestra Composer Chair Carlos Simon’s a cappella Words and Prayers of My Fathers, a tribute to the composer’s forebears setting words from their sermons and writings. James Burton leads the chorus in this performance.
The Tanglewood season doesn’t end here. The popular National Public Radio show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me with Peter Sagal and special guest Paul Giamatti broadcasts live from the Shed on Thursday, August 28, legendary Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd performs Saturday, August 30, and Bonnie Raitt headlines in the Shed on Sunday, August 31 to cap off a another great Tanglewood summer.