LENOX, Mass. — The Lenox Library welcomes back Dr. Jeremy Yudkin for another season of Tanglewood pre-concert talks. 

 

These free programs will take place in the Lenox Town Hall auditorium, located at 6 Walker Street, from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. on Friday afternoons and Sundays from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

 

The 2024 Tanglewood Talk schedule is as follows:

 

Friday, July 5. OPENING NIGHT. "All Beethoven!"

The Violin Concerto and the "Eroica" Symphony.

 

Sunday, July 7.  "Romanticism in its Final Flush."  

Richard Strauss and His Orchestral Songs.

 

Friday, July 12.  "Classical Ballet, Jazz Music, Simon."     

Balanchine, Ellington, and Carlos Simon's "Warmth from Other Suns" on the Great Migration.

 

Sunday, July 14.  "Special Guest: Carlos Simon."    

Meet Carlos Simon, newly appointed composer chair of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  

 

Friday, July 19.  "Bernstein and Brahms."

Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" (after W. H. Auden) and Brahms's "pastoral" Third Symphony.

 

Sunday, July 21. "Special Guest: Edwin Barker."

Edwin Barker is principal bass of the BSO. Also Charles Ives, Beethoven, and Strauss/Nietzsche.

 

Friday, July 26. "Koussy and the Double Bass."  

Koussevitzky the composer, Sibelius, and Scriabin.

 

Sunday, July 28. "Stravinsky, Copland, and Lee."   

A Symphony of Psalms, and Copland's piano concerto.  

 

Friday, August 2. NO LECTURE. 

Sunday, August 4.  "All Beethoven."

 

The Triple Concerto and Symphony No. 4.

Friday, August 9.  "Stravinsky and Rachmaninov." The height of the Romantic piano concerto and the revolution of The Rite of Spring.

 

Sunday, August 11.  "Mozart and Mahler."     

Opera arias from the masterful Mozart and the charming Mahler Fourth Symphony: "Heavenly Life."

 

Friday, August 16.  "All-Russian Program."

Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony -- the taming of fate.

 

Sunday, August 18.  "Schumann, Beethoven, Simon." 

Schumann's Cello Concerto, Beethoven's Seventh.

 

Friday, August 23.  "Chopin and Elgar." 

Chopin's First Piano Concerto and the Enigma of Elgar.

 

Sunday, August 25.  "The Two-Hundredth Anniversary of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."

 

The pre-concert talks are free thanks to the Lenox Library Association and Margery and Lewis Steinberg.

 

Jeremy Yudkin is Professor of Music and Co-Director of the Center for Beethoven Research at Boston University. He has served as Visiting Professor of Music at Oxford, Harvard, and the Sorbonne. He is the author of ten books.