Tanglewood season starts with Mahler
The Boston Symphony Orchestra will open its summer season at Tanglewood on July 9 with a performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony under the baton of James Levine. In a Mahler-filled summer for Levine, he will also lead the BSO in the composer’s Fourth Symphony, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in the Third Symphony. The BSO announced these and other details of the 2010 Tanglewood season today.
Tweaking a popular recent tradition, Levine will not lead the TMCO in a concert opera but will lead the BSO in a concert version of Mozart’s “Abduction From the Seraglio.’’ He also returns to the Tanglewood Theatre to lead TMC musicians in Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos.’’ His additional Tanglewood programs include a reprise of Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms’’ and Mozart’s “Requiem,’’ with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Seiji Ozawa returns to Tanglewood (July 24) with an all-Brahms program.
Among the returning guest conductors are Kurt Masur and Charles Dutoit, under whose baton cellist Yo-Yo Ma will perform the Elgar Concerto. David Zinman, Robert Spano, and Christoph von Dohnanyi will also lead the BSO, and conductors Susanna Malkki and Giancarlo Guerrero will make their Tanglewood debuts. Miguel Harth-Bedoya will lead a multimedia concert with music linked to the ancient Inca Empire.
In addition to Ma (who will also bring his Silk Road Ensemble), the summer’s soloists will include cellists Alisa Weilerstein and Lynn Harrell; violinists Pinchas Zukerman, Hilary Hahn, Joshua Bell, and Gil Shaham; and pianists Jeremy Denk, Peter Serkin, and Richard Goode. Vocal soloists will include Dawn Upshaw and Stephanie Blythe.
James Taylor and Carole King return (July 3, 4), and Arlo Guthrie will perform with Keith Lockhart and the Pops, which will mark its 125th anniversary with a pre-season concert (July 2).
The TMC will honor an anniversary too, its 70th, at the Festival of Contemporary Music (Aug. 12-16). Gunther Schuller, John Harbison, and Oliver Knussen will be its co-directors.
Ozawa Hall will host the Mark Morris Dance Group, the Emerson Quartet, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, vocalist Audra McDonald, baritone Matthias Goerne, medievalist Benjamin Bagby, cellist Pieter Wispelwey, and pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Garrick Ohlsson.
Tickets go on sale Feb. 14 at 888-266-1200 or www.tanglewood.org. 
