Tanglewood After Ten Years

Extract

After many visits to Tanglewood during the years 1940 to 1949 one is finally driven to pose the question as to how far this great summer musical event may really be called a Festival.

I do not think that any extravagant claims have in fact been made for its being “a Festival,” and over the years that magnificent character in music, Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, has been at pains always to emphasize the “student” or “school” aspect of the undertaking of which he is, so to speak, the Alpha and Omega. One cannot begin to discuss Tanglewood without paying the deepest possible tribute to the very real work, effort and love that Dr. Koussevitzky has devoted to this, his child, for the benefit of musical America, young and old. There is no similar event anywhere else in the world—but then, one might say that there is no similar character anywhere else in the world who could in fact have engendered it. Yet after ten years one begins to feel that either the students have outgrown Tanglewood or that Tanglewood has out grown the students. In the opinion of this writer the latter is definitely the case.