Tanglewood Celebrates 75th With Free Web Stream

On July 20, 1958, at Tanglewood — the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — pianist Leon Fleisher played an electrifying Brahms First Piano Concerto with the orchestra under its former music director, Pierre Monteux. This remarkable teaming has not been heard since then.

But the BSO has come up with an inspired way to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Tanglewood. Every day for 75 days, through the summer, the BSO is streaming a different historic Tanglewood concert on its website, including this astonishing Brahms, and going even further back to the very first Tanglewood concert, with a Beethoven Fifth Symphony under the leadership of the visionary Serge Koussevitzky on August 5, 1937.

I can’t remember when I first started going to Tanglewood. It was certainly before I owned my own car, because I needed someone to give me a ride out to the Berkshires, more than two hours from Boston. Music was only part of the pleasure. The setting is idyllic, and a good picnic out on the lawn could be as enjoyable as the music itself. Of course, the open-air acoustics are not going to compare well to the magnificent sound at Boston’s Symphony Hall, and many of the programs simply repeat what has already been performed in Boston. But every now and again, there’s something wonderful that Boston can’t replicate.