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TANGLEWOOD
A Brief History
In August 1934 a group of music-loving summer residents of the Berkshires organized a series of three outdoor concerts at Interlaken, to be given by members of the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Henry Hadley. The venture was so successful that the promoters incorporated the Berkshire Symphonic Festival and repeated the experiment during the next summer.
The Festival committee then invited Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra to take part in the following year's concerts. The orchestra's Trustees accepted, and on August 13, 1936, the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave its first concerts in the Berkshires (at Holmwood, a former Vanderbilt estate, later the Center at Foxhollow). The series again consisted of three concerts and was given under a large tent, drawing a total of nearly 15,000 people.
In the winter of 1936 Mrs. Gorham Brooks and Miss Mary Aspinwall Tappan offered Tanglewood, the Tappan family estate, with its buildings and 210 acres of lawns and meadows, as a gift to Koussevitzky and the orchestra. The offer was gratefully accepted, and on August 5, 1937, the festival's largest crowd so far assembled under a tent for the first Tanglewood concert, an all-Beethoven program. At the all-Wagner concert that opened the 1937 festival's second weekend, rain and thunder twice interrupted the "Rienzi Overture" and necessitated the omission altogether of the "Forest Murmurs" from Siegfried, music too delicate to be heard through the downpour. Gertrude Robinson Smith, one of the festival's founders, made an appeal to raise funds for the building of a permanent structure. The appeal was broadened by means of a printed circular handed out at the two remaining concerts, and within a short time enough money had been raised to begin active planning for a "music pavilion."
Eliel Saarinen, the eminent architect selected by Koussevitzky, proposed an elaborate design that went far beyond the immediate needs of the festival and, more important, went well beyond the budget of $100,000. His second, simplified plans were still too expensive; he finally wrote that if the Trustees insisted on remaining within their budget, they would have "just a shed," "which any builder could accomplish without the aid of an architect." The Trustees then turned to Stockbridge engineer Joseph Franz to make further simplifications in Saarinen's plans in order to lower the cost. The building he erected was inaugurated on the evening of August 4, 1938, when the first concert of that year's festival was given, and remains, with modifications, to this day. It has echoed with the music of the Boston Symphony Orchestra every summer since, except for the war years (1942-45), and has become almost a place of pilgrimage to millions of concertgoers. In 1959, as the result of a collaboration between the acoustical consultant Bolt Beranek and Newman and architect Eero Saarinen and Associates, the installation of the then-unique Edmund Hawes Talbot Orchestra Canopy, along with other improvements, produced the Shed's present world-famous acoustics. In 1988, on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, the Shed was re-dedicated as "The Serge Koussevitzky Music Shed," recognizing the far-reaching vision of the BSO's legendary music director.
In 1940, the Berkshire Music Center (now the Tanglewood Music Center) began its operations. By 1941 the Theatre-Concert Hall, the Chamber Music Hall, and several small studios were finished, and the festival had so expanded its activities and its reputation for excellence that it attracted nearly 100,000 visitors.With the Boston Symphony Orchestra's acquisition in 1986 of the Highwood estate adjacent to Tanglewood, the stage was set for the expansion of Tanglewood's public grounds by some 40%. A master plan developed by the Cambridge firm of Carr, Lynch, Hack and Sandell to unite the Tanglewood and Highwood properties confirmed the feasibility of using the newly acquired property as the site for a new concert hall to replace the outmoded Theatre-Concert Hall (which was used continuously with only minor modifications since 1941), and for improved Tanglewood Music Center facilities. Inaugurated on July 7, 1994, Seiji Ozawa Hall -- designed by the architectural firm William Rawn Associates of Boston in collaboration with acoustician R. Lawrence Kirkegaard & Associates of Downer's Grove, Illinois, and representing the first new concert facility to be constructed at Tanglewood in more than a half-century - now provides a new venue for TMC concerts, and for the varied recital and chamber music concerts offered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra throughout the summer. Ozawa Hall, with its attendant buildings also serves as the focal point of the TMC's new Leonard Bernstein Campus.
Today Tanglewood annually draws more than 300,000 visitors. In addition to the concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, there are weekly chamber music concerts, Prelude concerts and Open Rehearsals, the annual Festival of Contemporary Music, and almost daily concerts by the gifted young musicians of the Tanglewood Music Center. The Boston Pops Orchestra appears annually, and in recent years a weekend of jazz has been added to close the summer. The season offers not only a vast quantity of music but also a vast range of musical forms and styles, all of it presented with a regard for artistic excellence that makes the festival unique.