Estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, site of an international festival of music and the Tanglewood Music Center (Berkshire Music Center until 1985). The festival began in 1934 in neighbouring Interlaken as a series of open-air concerts by members of the New York PO under Henry Hadley. The Boston SO played its first Berkshire Festival concerts in 1936 at Holmwood, moving the following year to Tanglewood, where the 5000-seat Music Shed was inaugurated in 1938. Since 1936 the Boston SO’s music directors have also been directors of the festival: Sergey Koussevitzky (1936–50; the festival was suspended from 1942–5), Charles Münch (1951–62), Erich Leinsdorf (1963–9) and Seiji Ozawa (from 1970). The eight-week season also includes concerts by the Boston Pops Orchestra, performances of chamber music, jazz and folk music, and, since 1964, a Festival of Contemporary Music (originally in cooperation with the Fromm Music Foundation).
The Tanglewood Music Center (established in 1940 as the Berkshire Music Center) is a summer academy where young musicians (instrumentalists, singers, conductors and composers) continue their training under leading musicians and teachers. It was run by successive conductors of the Boston SO until 1970, when Gunther Schuller became director. In 1985 Leon Fleisher was appointed artistic director; he was succeeded in 1997 by Ellen Highstein, working under Ozawa’s artistic supervision. Leonard Bernstein served as general adviser to both the centre and the festival from 1970 to 1972. Students attend lectures, seminars, conducting classes and composers’ forums, and perform in the centre’s orchestra, in vocal recitals and chamber groups. Boris Goldovsky directed the Opera Workshop at the centre from 1946 to 1962. Since 1965 the Boston University Tanglewood Institute has presented a variety of programmes for younger students, mostly of high school age. In 1986 the Boston SO acquired the Highwood estate adjacent to Tanglewood; a number of new facilities have been built there, notably the Seiji Ozawa Hall (cap. 1180) situated on Tanglewood’s Leonard Bernstein Campus, which was opened in 1994 and provides a modern home for the Tanglewood Music Center.
M.A.D. Howe: The Tale of Tanglewood, Scene of the Berkshire Festivals (New York, 1946)
A Tanglewood Dream: the Berkshire Music Center 25th Anniversary Album, 1940–65 (New York, 1965)
J.R. Holland: Tanglewood (Barre, MA, 1973)
H. Kupferberg: Tanglewood (New York, 1976)
A.L. Pincus: Scenes from Tanglewood (Boston, 1989)
RITA H. MEAD/R