Tanglewood Music Center - History

History

The Tanglewood Music Center (TMC) was founded in 1940 as the Berkshire Music Center by the BSO's music director, Serge Koussevitzky, three years after the establishment of Tanglewood as the summer home of the BSO. He served as director of the Center until one year after his retirement with the BSO, when he was succeeded by new BSO director Charles Münch, who ran the TMC from 1951 until 1962. Munch was succeeded by BSO director Erich Leinsdorf, who was TMC director from 1963 to 1970.

In 1970, three years before the start of his directorship of the BSO, Seiji Ozawa took over its activities at Tanglewood. He was also actively involved in the Center, which was directed by Gunther Schuller during this time, with Leonard Bernstein as general advisor. In 1975 also the great Italian conductor Franco Ferrara took over its activities at Tanglewood. Pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher took over the direction of the Center in 1985, but resigned abruptly several years later in 1997 after an apparent dispute with Ozawa. Fleisher was replaced by Ellen Highstein, the current TMC director. Ozawa was succeeded as BSO director in 2001 by James Levine, who conducted some TMC concerts and operas and worked with the student conductors in addition to leading Tanglewood's BSO programs. Levine left the BSO in 2011 after health issues. No replacement has yet been announced.

Read more about this topic:  Tanglewood Music Center

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more
    John Adams (1735–1826)

    A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)