BSO Conductor Celebrates Birthday at Tanglewood
On this day in 1940, Sergei Koussevitzky celebrated his 66th birthday with the first class to graduate from the Berkshire Music Center in Lenox. The school was adjacent to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Russian-born Koussevitzky, the BSO's legendary conductor, was the guiding spirit behind both institutions. He first brought the BSO to Tanglewood in the summer of 1936 and soon after persuaded the trustees to build the now-famous Music Shed. Two years later, he founded the Music Center so that gifted young people such as Leonard Bernstein could learn from older masters. Nearly 70 years later, Tanglewood is one of the foremost summer music festivals in the world, drawing 350,000 concertgoers a season.
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