This Weekend's Programs in Brief

July 11-13, 2025

Alongside the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons, this weekend features the return to Tanglewood of director Bill Barclay, for a special staged adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with music from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet. Concert Theatre Works’ collaborations with the BSO, which have included Grieg and Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, never fail to delight. We’re honored to present the world premiere of this production on Friday evening’s program. 

Saturday evening, the outstanding Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho performs both of Maurice Ravel’s piano concertos—the Concerto in G and the Concerto for the Left Hand, Ravel’s final large-scale works. Seong-Jin Cho’s performances of the concertos at Symphony Hall with the BSO and Andris Nelsons were released on CD by Deutsche Grammophon earlier this year. Tonight’s performances, among others of Ravel’s music this summer, celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. (This week’s Friday Prelude Concert features both Ravel and his teacher Gabriel Fauré.) 

The G major concerto’s first performance was given by Ravel’s longtime collaborator Maguerite Long in Paris in January 1932. The BSO gave the American premiere in April 1932. Ravel wrote the Concerto for the Left Hand for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm after being wounded in World War I. Both concertos show the influence of Ravel’s encounters with jazz as well as his lifelong interest in the music of Spain. 

On Sunday, former BSO Artistic Partner Thomas Ades, leads Sibelius's Violin Concerto with Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto in his Tanglewood debut. The work features the influence of the Finnish traditional tradition that is such an important element of Sibelius’s music. The flowing, gradual, organic transformation of thematic ideas in Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony is a defining characteristic of his later work. The majestic finale is one of the most thrilling passages in orchestral music. Frequently inspired by the natural world, composer Gabriella Smith describes her Tumblebird Contrails as being inspired by the clash and interplay of activity, both aural and visual, experienced in a single moment at California’s Point Reyes National Seashore.