Wednesday, May 01, 2013

The Tanglewood Story from 1949

The BSO musicians here I remember from my days as a young person in Boston are Alfred Krips, Rolland Tapley, George Zazofsky, Clarence Knudson, Stanley Benson, and Sheldon Rotenberg; violists Eugen Lehner, George Humphrey, and Jerome Lipson; cellist Alfred Zighera; flutist James Pappoutsakis, oboist John Homes, English horn player Louis Speyer, clarinetist Pasquale Cardillo, bassoonist Ernst Panenka, horn players James Stagliano and Harry Shapiro, trumpet player Roger Voisin, harpist Bernard Zighera, and percussionist Charles Smith.

I knew them as the elder statesmen of the orchestra. I don't recognize any of the student musicians here aside from Elayne Jones (you can see and hear her playing timpani at 8:34). That sure is some austere Bach at 12:51! I wonder what happened to that two-headed sculpture? Do you recognize anyone? Who is that composer?



Here's a link to the programs from that 68th Season (1948-1949), which I suppose was Serge Koussevitsky's last season as music director.



UPDATE: The oboist is Stevens Hewitt, and the composer-conductor is Jurian Andreason. The piccolo player is Dave Vornholt, the trombonist is John Melick, and the bassoonist is Ben Lepson.

3 comments:

Sean said...

Thanks for the link.

Have you seen Yo-Yo Ma's "A Month At Tanglewood"?

Elaine Fine said...

I do recall seeing that film from the early 1990s, and remember that the Tanglewood I saw in it was largely unfamiliar to me. The size of the property had grown to twice its size, and the feeling of the place was far more commercial than the dowdy and rustic "down to business" place I remember. The Tanglewood of my youth was much more like the one in this film.

Ranting Curmudgeon said...

Thank you for mentioning my grandfather, George Humphrey in your blog. I hope you remember him fondly. I can only imagine what he was like with students!