This time of year, I’m reminded of an old cartoon in which an elegant lady in a billowy dress is overlooking an Alpine landscape: “The great outdoors,” she gushes, “I just love them!” Whether you’re letting the warm sun pour down on you or the cool evening breezes waft by (or just having the AC turned up high), summer couldn’t be a more pleasant time to listen to classical music, even if it means a bit more travel and traffic to get to the concerts. Here are some of this season’s greatest hits.
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MASSACHSETTS
Tanglewood
Lenox
June 20-Aug. 28
The summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the prettiest sites for a music festival anywhere. Ask any of the picnickers on the vast lawn outside the Koussevitzky Music Shed. Sometimes even a thunderclap cooperates to punctuate the music. Unlike in Boston, where the same program is repeated for a whole weekend, at Tanglewood there’s a different concert every night. Look at the website to see the entire summer season, but here are some of the events that seem the most interesting and exciting to me.
This summer’s big BSO concert opera will be an old warhorse, Puccini’s “Tosca” with Andris Nelsons conducting soprano Kristine Opolais (the ex-Mrs. Nelsons) in the title role and tenor Seok Jong Baek, but the real star may be bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, who’s been getting sensational reviews for his villainous Scarpia at the Met (July 19). Terfel, accompanied by harpist Hannah Stone, will also give a solo recital (Seiji Ozawa Hall, July 15).
But “Tosca” isn’t the only opera at Tanglewood. Another major vocal event will be Matthew Aucoin’s “Music for New Bodies,” a hybrid of opera, symphony and song cycle, with achingly personal poems by Jorie Graham. Aucoin himself will conduct soprano Song Hee Lee, mezzo-soprano Megan Moore, tenor Paul Appleby, baritone William Socolof and the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC—great acronym!), and perhaps most exciting of all, it will be staged by superstar director Peter Sellars (Ozawa Hall, Aug. 7). And the Tanglewood Learning Institute will be offering one of the most charming of all operas, Ravel’s “L’Enfant et les sortilèges” (in honor of the 150th year of his birth), with its enchanting libretto by Colette, one of Seiji Ozawa’s favorite pieces (Ozawa Hall, Aug. 4).
I eagerly anticipate the return to the BSO of conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, former music director of the LA Philharmonic, in his first performance with the BSO since 2012. He’ll be leading Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto in Sibelius’ Violin Concerto on a program with Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 and Gabriella Smith’s “Tumblebird Contrails” (July 13). Salonen will then join the conducting fellows in a program of Ravel suites and lead the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in Stravinsky’s ever-astonishing “Rite of Spring” (Ozawa Hall, July 14).
This year’s annual Festival of Contemporary Music will be under the direction of the extraordinary Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz (currently Carnegie Hall’s composer in residence). And the concerts are free! The composers will include Gabriella Smith, Georgina Derbez, Diana Syrse, Ellen Reid, Arturo Márquez, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and of course Ortiz herself. The most intriguing program is called “Mexico, Cuba, the U.S., and one hundred years of percussion” (Ozawa Hall, July 24-28).
Maybe — no, definitely — the Tanglewood concert I’m most excited about is the debut of one of our most exciting string quartets, Brooklyn Rider, in a program that includes work by the quartet’s founding violinist Colin Jacobsen, Philip Glass (his Third Quartet), Reena Esmail and Schubert’s profoundly moving C-major String Quintet. Wait a minute–doesn’t a quintet need a fifth player? Yes, and that player will be no less than longtime friend of the Brooklyn Riders, Yo-Yo Ma (Ozawa Hall, Aug. 13).
Rockport Chamber Music Festival
Rockport
June 13-July 13
Unlike Tanglewood, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival has only one view, but it’s pretty spectacular. And so is the music. Here’s a list of the numerous concerts that stand out for me.
The festival opens with the refined pianist Angela Hewitt performing a work very dear to her, Bach’s Goldberg Variations (June 13). The impressive Dover Quartet joins forces with the renowned violist Roberto Díaz (president of the Curtis Institute of Music) in what ought to be a memorable performance of the Brahms String Quintet No. 2. The program begins with irresistible string quartets by Schumann and Tchaikovsky (June 15). The prize-winning Isidore Quartet begins with the Ravel String Quartet and the first of Beethoven’s great late quartets, then welcomes prize-winning saxophonist Steven Banks in his own Saxophone Quintet (June 19). The Cheng2 (“Cheng Squared”) Duo are a pair of siblings who play cello (Bryan) and piano (Silvie). Their Rockport program includes pieces by Debussy and Ravel, Manuel de Falla’s marvelous “Seven Popular Spanish Songs,” Beethoven’s magnificent Opus 69 and Sir Lankan-Canadian composer Dinuk Wijeratne’s “Portrait of an Imaginary Sibling” (June 20).
And this list doesn’t even get to the end of June. Other stellar performers include pianists Jonathan Biss, playing Schubert’s last two piano sonatas (June 28), and Jeremy Denk, participating in a two-part tribute to Fauré (July 5-6), the beloved conductorless ensemble A Far Cry in a program ending with former Boston Globe music critic and now distinguished author and professor Jeremy Eichler talking about “the history of music and the music of history” (June 29), the Imani Winds (June 27), and Rockport Festival director and violist Barry Shiffman (June 26). Check the website for more details or just throw a dart. There’s hardly a concert in the entire Rockport Festival that I wouldn’t be happy to hear.
Aston Magna
Newton & Great Barrington
July 10-Aug. 3
Violinist Daniel Stepner’s Aston Magna Summer Festival is more than half a century old, but the performances remain fresh and appealing. This summer’s four programs (four Thursdays in Newton and three Saturdays and one Sunday in Great Barrington) include “Music from Thomas Jefferson’s Library,” with soprano Kristen Watson and Stepner playing Baroque violin (July 10 and 12); an irresistible selection of “Late Mozart” that could also be called “Mozart’s Most Profound Chamber Works” (Adagio and Fugue, the G-minor String Quintet, and the heavenly Clarinet Quintet with Thomas Carroll on basset horn, July 17 and 19); harpsichordist Peter Sykes directing “From Castello to Canzano,” spanning music from the 17th century to the present (July 24 and 26); and “Fiddler’s Four,” featuring Vivaldi’s ubiquitous but no less wonderful “Four Seasons” (July 31 and Aug. 3).
Landmarks Orchestra
Boston
July 16-Aug. 27
Christopher Wilkins leads Boston’s community orchestra in a series of free concerts at “landmarks” around the city, and especially in the group’s summer home at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade. But the summer season opens not with the Landmarks Orchestra but with a guest orchestra, the Longwood Symphony, made up of members of Boston’s medical community. Ronald Feldman is the guest conductor. The program has not yet been announced (July 16). Landmarks and Wilkins return with “The Best of Boston,” celebrating the Landmarks’ 25th anniversary with a freewheeling program of works by composers with a serious Boston connection: John Williams, Leonard Bernstein, Florence Price, John Harbison and Amy Beach (July 23). This will be followed by “Peter & the Wolf and More” (July 30), the Mercury Orchestra led by Channing Yu in music by Respighi and Finzi (Aug. 6), and more Landmarks Orchestra: “Debussy & Music of the Sea” (Aug. 13), “Eroica Symphony: Beethoven & Revolution” (Aug. 20) and — big closer — Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe” Suite No. 2 and the vast Mahler First Symphony (Aug. 27).
Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival
Various locations
July 29-Aug. 22
Jon Manasse (clarinet) and Jon Nakamatsu (piano) usually put together an intriguing and delightful spectrum of summer programs across the Cape. This summer’s inventive series begins with Genghis Barbie: the All-Female Horn Experience (July 29) and ends with “Phenomenon: Two Manasses, One Nakamatsu and More,” featuring the sublime Bach Concerto in D-minor for two violins with two clarinets (father Jon and son Alec) instead of violins (Aug. 21 and Aug. 22).
Bang on a Can: LOUD Weekend
North Adams
July 31-Aug. 2
It’s not an accident that the popular contemporary music group Bang on a Can’s annual event at MASS MoCA is called the LOUD Weekend. This summer’s “fully loaded, three-day, eclectic super-mix of creative, experimental and unusual music” kicks off with Steve Reich’s seminal four-movement “Drumming” and veers from arrangements of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto’s film music to a collaborate effort by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe called “Shelter” that suggests both the power and the threat of nature.
Great Barrington
Aug. 24, 26 & 29
The Berkshire Opera Festival’s one fully staged opera is Verdi’s enduring “La traviata,” with its heartbreaking love story told through some of the most memorable tunes in all of opera. Soprano Vanessa Becerra sings Violetta, the consumptive courtesan. Tenor Joshua Blue sings Alfredo, her lover. And baritone Darren Drone sings Alredo’s interfering though not evil father. Verdi’s lively and moving score makes all the characters sympathetic. It’s nice to see veteran Metropolitan Opera bass-baritone John Cheek listed for the cameo role of Violetta’s caring doctor. Artistic director and company co-founder Brian Garman conducts the production staged by Berkshire Opera’s co-founder Jonathan Loy.
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NEW YORK
Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Saratoga Springs
Aug. 6-23
In Busby Berkeley’s “42nd Street,” when the director tells the leading lady that the show will be opening in Philadelphia, she whines, “I don’t want to go to Philadelphia,” because her ex-boyfriend is there. “Honey,” the director says, “no one wants to go to Philadelphia!” That was in 1933. Now, partly because Yannick Nézet-Séguin is directing the Philadelphia Orchestra, everyone wants to go there. But for three weeks every August, you don’t have to go all the way to Philadelphia, because the Philadelphia Orchestra comes to Saratoga Springs, New York. This summer, Nézet-Séguin is leading two programs: one that includes such familiar favorites as Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Suite and Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” with Italian pianist Beatrice Rana, and a real rarity, William Grant Still’s Second Symphony (“Song of a New Race”) (Aug. 13). This will be followed by the overwhelming Verdi Requiem, with four leading soloists from the Metropolitan Opera (where Nézet-Séguin just happens to be the artistic director): soprano Ailyn Pérez, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, tenor Matthew Polenzani and bass-baritone Alfred Walker (Aug. 14).
Kicking off the summer season, leading three concerts, is the esteemed Marin Alsop, including one concert with violinist Randall Goosby playing the beloved Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (Aug. 6, Aug. 7 and Aug. 8). And among the guest vocalists will be Cynthia Erivo on Aug. 22 (want to bet she’ll sing something from “Wicked”?) and Renée Fleming on Aug. 15. And if you want to see what George Balanchine thought the Stravinsky Violin Concerto looked like, the New York City Ballet will be offering a couple of performances of this stunning masterwork (July 11-12).
Opera Saratoga
Saratoga Springs
June 20-29
The two major productions by Opera Saratoga are the freshest choice of repertoire I’ve come across for the entire summer. First, an Offenbach masterpiece that gets performed all too rarely in this country, “La Vie Parisienne,” that I am happy to say will be sung in French, which makes me optimistic about it carrying the sly (and not so sly) wit and charm of the music (with — fingers crossed — spoken dialogue in English). Randy Ho, Philip Themio Stoddard, Sung-Yeun Kim and Tivoli Treloar sing the leading roles. The conductor is Juliane Gallant, with stage direction by Mary Birnbaum. And the season’s Broadway musical is neither Sondheim nor a blockbuster like “Guys and Dolls,” but the intimately touching and memorably tuneful “She Loves Me,” Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock’s lovely musical version of Ernst Lubitsch’s masterful “Shop Around the Corner.” The leading roles will be played by Jarrett Porter, Shavon Lloyd, and in the role created on Broadway by the great Barbara Cook, Christine Taylor Price, with an appearance by the superb tenor Peter Kazaras in the role so memorably played in the film by the Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan. Adam Turner conducts, John Matsumoto Giampietro directs.
Glimmerglass Festival
Cooperstown
July 11-Aug. 17
Glimmerglass just might be the most popular venue for summer opera, at least in the Northeast. The theater is excellent and usually so is the singing. (And if you don’t like opera, you can just go to the Baseball Hall of Fame.) This summer’s productions range from the extremely familiar (Puccini’s “Tosca”) to the more explorative (Stravinsky’s darkly satirical 18th-century morality tale “The Rake’s Progress”). Even the usual Broadway show, Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George,” is on the serious side (it certainly doesn’t have the guffaws that Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” provides). And for fans of the original cast of “Sunday in the Park,” there will be an evening of Broadway legend Bernadette Peters in concert (July 31).
Glimmerglass also has on tap a world premiere: Derek Bermel’s opera based on the celebrated novel by Sandra Cisneros, “The House on Mango Street,” with composer and novelist sharing the authorship of the libretto. And there will also be a recreation of former Glimmerglass director Francesca Zambello’s “Odyssey,” with music by Ben Moore. Among the vocalists are Michelle Bradley, Yongzhao Yu and Greer Grimsley (Puccini); Marina Pires and John Riddle (Sondheim); Adrian Kramer, Lydia Grindatto, Aleksey Bogdanov and Deborah Nansteel (Stravinsky); Mikaela Bennett (Bermel); and Justin Burgess and Kaileigh Riess (Moore).
Bard SummerScape 2025
Annandale-on-Hudson
June 27-Aug. 17
Most years, Bard College’s SummerScape features rarely produced operas. This year’s rarity is an opera that I confess I’ve never even heard of, even though I love the composer. It’s Bedřich Smetana’s “Dalibor,” a medieval melodrama of love, murder and revenge (sung in Czech with English supertitles) in its first fully staged American production, with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein. Ladislav Elgr sings the title role, Izabela Matuła is the ill-fated Milada. The stage director is Jean-Romain Vesperini. The subject of this year’s close study, the center of an 11-part series of discussions and performances, is the 20th-centurry Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů.
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NEW HAMPSHIRE
Yellow Barn
Putney
July 11-Aug. 9
Yellow Barn has a real barn and there’s more than a month of concerts by the professional musicians who are in residence, and the public is invited to attend. Every summer, there’s a week in which an internationally distinguished composer is part of the mix. This year’s composer in residence is the British composer and educator Julian Anderson. A “spectralist” who uses an intriguing element of electronics, his music is both challenging and appealing. My guess is that his one public talk will also be both challenging and appealing (Aug. 5). Thursday concerts are also free.
Monadnock Music
Various locations
June 22-Aug.6
Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, Monadnock Music was an important destination for classical music. Under legendary composers James and Jocelyn Bolle, we’d go miles to hear exciting and challenging repertoire and annual opera performances. Composers like Elliott Carter and John Harbison, great musicians, and singers on the level of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, James Maddalena and Tony Arnold were in regular attendance.
Now under the skillful direction of cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer, Monadnock Music offers a potpourri of free classical music performances in picturesque churches and meeting halls across New Hampshire, as well as some entertaining fundraising events and family concerts. These are the tempting free programs: a string sextet concert featuring an arrangement of Beethoven’s “Pastorale” Symphony and Dvořák’s String Sextet (Jaffrey, June 22); harpsichordist and chair of the Longy School Historical Performance department John McKean playing 17th- and 18th-century (mostly) German music from Matthias Weckmann to Bach (Dublin, July 6); an eclectic program of piano trios from Mozart and Shostakovich, Mary Howe, Jungyoon Wie and Brian Raphael Nabors (Deering, July 12; Rindge, July 13); string quartets by Kian Ravei (responding to seven Emily Dickinson poems), Zhou Long, Libby Larsen and Reynaldo Hahn (Westmoreland, July 17); music for string quartet and harp, plus two pieces that sound like they had harps, Jessie Montgomery’s “Strum” and Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet (Harrisville, July 26); and an evening of irresistible love songs with soprano Carley DeFranco and tenor Omar Najmi (Nelson, Aug. 6). Most of the music for cello will be played by Popper-Keizer himself.
New Hampshire Music Festival
Various locations
July 8-31
Summer music festivals can fall into the trap of playing down to their audiences. New Hampshire is lucky its major musical festivities don’t do that. NHMF, which has been running since 1952, has plenty of surprises in store — including some free events — with both its chamber and orchestral concerts. For example, the first chamber music program of the summer presents Mozart’s heavenly oboe quartet, a viola sonata by Nino Rota with violist Bernard Di Gregorio and the elegant pianist Leslie Amper, and a piano quartet by Scottish composer Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (Plymouth, July 8). When was the last time you heard a concert with those three composers. Another fascinating chamber program is made up of works by four composers who spanned the turn of the 20th century: Debussy, Kodály. Milhaud and Bruch (Plymouth, July 15). Amper returns, either on the piano or on the harpsichord, in five additional concerts, one of them including Beethoven’s uncanny “Ghost” Trio (Plymouth, July 22). And the season ends with guest conductor Mélisse Brunet leading Valerie Coleman’s “Umoja: Anthem of Unity,” George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with pianist Artina McCain, and Mussorgsky’s brilliant “Pictures at an Exhibition” (Plymouth, July 31).
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RHODE ISLAND
Newport Classical Music Festival
Various locations
July 5-22
There are few venues more glamorous for listening to music than the historic mansions of Newport. Some of the concerts are already sold out, but some of the most interesting are still available. Here’s my personal list of recommendations. Soprano Karen Slack (who won a Grammy for best classical solo vocal album — songs of Florence Price) and her accompanist Kevin J. Miller present their collaborative song cycle “African Queens,” about “seven fierce African Queens, whose legacies as rulers and warriors have been overlooked in the West” (July 12). The probing Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan plays a recital at the Breakers featuring Bach, Franck and Schubert (July 18). And the outstanding violinist Leila Josefowicz with pianist Alexei Tartakovsky play Beethoven’s sublime Violin Sonata No. 10 (his last), Debussy’s mysterious Violin Sonata and Stravinsky’s enchanting Divertimento from his ballet based on Tchaikovsky, “The Fairy’s Kiss” (July 20).
The final concert — with the sensitive and powerful violinist Stefan Jackiw and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (joining forces for the beloved Mendelssohn Violin Concerto) — is the one I most want to go to, but it’s of course sold out (though you’re encouraged to put your name on a waiting list). Frankly, I don’t understand why any of these concerts aren’t sold out. But by the time you read this, they probably will be.
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MAINE
Salt Bay Chamberfest
Various locations
Aug. 5-16
“Earth Song” is what the Salt Bay Chamberfest is calling its four different programs this summer. The first begins with traditional Wabanaki drumming and includes earthy pieces by composer and “mystic cellist” Dawn Avery, who is of Mohawk heritage, composer and preservationist of the Passamaquoddy language Allen Sockabasin, singer-drummer Lauren Stevens (who will be performing), and Dvořák. The second festival concert is with the wonderful Brentano String Quartet, who will be playing famous and not-so-famous movements from quartets by Dvořák, Schubert, Bartók, Tchaikovsky, Ginastera and Wen-Chung, plus short works by Monteverdi and Lei Liang. Then comes a program that includes a newly commissioned work by inti figgis-vizueta, plus Debussy’s string quartet and Terry Riley’s “The Holy Liftoff.” And the summer season ends with Mahler — the Rückert Songs and “Der Abschied” (The Farewell) from “The Song of the Earth,” with mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich, and Taiwanese American composer Shih-Hui Chen’s “Returning Souls.” The final Salt Bay concert (in Bangor) combines selections from both the first concert and the previous one, with both vocalists, Stevens and Aldrich.
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CONNECTICUT
Norfolk Chamber Music Festival
Norfolk
July 4-Aug. 16
Celebrating musical “conversations,” the NCMS calls its summer series “Dialogues.” And here are some of the conversations I’d like to overhear. The season opens with Joan Tower’s “Petroushskates,” Jessie Montgomery’s popular “Strum,” Paul Schoenfeld’s Trio For Clarinet, Violin and Piano (with distinguished clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist Wei-Yi Yang) and Aaron Copland’s most enduring tribute to Americana, “Appalachian Spring” (July 4). The next “dialogue” will be between bassoonist Frank Morelli and trumpeter Kevin Cobb on a program that includes Hindemith’s Septet for Winds (July 11). The third “dialogue” is titled “Music & Hollywood,” featuring such iconic film composers as Bernard Herrmann (Suite from “Psycho”), Erich Korngold, Nino Rota, and Leonard Bernstein’s Suite from “West Side Story” (July 18). Then a “dialogue” between “Tradition & Innovation,” with music by Saint-Saëns, Ravel and a world premiere by Valerie Coleman, featuring Coleman herself on flute (July 26). The dialogue in “Night in an Early 1800s Concert Hall” is between the players and the audience, and not to worry if you can’t figure it out on your own, you will be taught what to do (Aug. 8). And the last of the dialogues will be between Robert and Clara Schumann and their friend Johannes Brahms (Aug. 9).
The festival has also invited some celebrated string quartets. The Brentano Quartet will play concerts including music by Schubert, Webern and Beethoven (July 5) and Haydn, Timo Andres and Dvořák (July 12). The Miró Quartet will play Beethoven, Golijov and Prokofiev (July 19) and Haydn, Ginastera, Debussy and a movement from a Franck quartet (July 25). And the Shanghai Quartet will offer Beethoven, Zhou Long and Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet (Aug. 1).
The NCMF summer season will end with a “musical tour of choral works” from the Renaissance to the present, by the Norfolk Festival Chamber Choir and Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Douma (Aug. 16).
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VERMONT
Marlboro Music Festival
July 19-Aug. 17
Marlboro
Marlboro Music is so widely admired, you’re probably already familiar with its distinguished history. It was founded in 1951 by such legendary musicians as Hermann and Adolf Busch, Adolf’s son-in-law pianist Rudolf Serkin (who remained artistic director until his death in 1991), and Blanche, Louis and Marcel Moyse. They’ve been joined by some — no, many — of the most notable performers and composers. Now Marlboro Music is under the direction of pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss and this year’s composer-in-residence is Reena Esmail. (I was also thrilled to see among the resident artists the name of the great American soprano Benita Valente, now, at 90, retired from the concert and opera stages but long associated with Marlboro.)
For three weeks, some 75 international musicians of all ages and stripes (the list is on the Marlboro website) work on their own chamber pieces with the resident artists. Some will be chosen for public performance, and the selections will be announced each week. Part of the appeal of the festival is the suspense of not knowing who or what is going to be performed. That’s never stopped anyone from buying a ticket.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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