5 Things You Didn’t Know About Tanglewood

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By Raphael Mostel August 10, 2012

• A 20% Solution: Tanglewood’s educational center has trained one out of every five American orchestral musicians.

• A Beef with Mr. Copland: While driving with colleagues to Tanglewood on a dark, foggy night, Aaron Copland was arrested for an accident that wrecked his Studebaker and killed a cow. Nevertheless, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association chose Copland’s music for its ubiquitous “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” ad campaign.

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• A Memorable Premiere: Among the hundreds of works premiered here was Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes,” in a fully staged production in 1947. The opera was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundations, which still commissions new music.

• A Presidential Prokofiev: Eleanor Roosevelt narrated the 1950 Tanglewood performance of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.”

• A Particularly Stinko Concert: In 1977, one attendee of the Festival of Contemporary Music was a skunk that ambled into the Shed and quietly settled in only a few seats from Paul Fromm. During the intermission following the premiere of Yehudi Wyner’s “Serenade for Seven Instruments,” audience members noticed the skunk’s presence and scurried to distance themselves. A woman chastised the crowd: “The skunk was under my seat the whole first half of the concert, and he minded his business. So I say let’s be quiet and get on with the show.” Everyone did, and the concert ended with the skunk still placidly in place.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

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