BSO — 2011/11/10-12 — Info and Reviews

I've already heard this week's program, which is being played again this evening and broadcast/streamed live and retransmitted tomorrow afternoon. Worth hearing, IMO. But first, here's what they have to say about it themselves. (BTW, the BSO website will be offline from this evening until about 4:00 Monday afternoon, as they revamp it.)

Weber, Barber and Tchaikovsky Boston Symphony Orchestra  November 12, 2011 8:00 PM Symphony Hall Boston, Massachusetts Share this event:

Featured Artists    Myung-Whun Chung  conductor   Garrick Ohlsson piano Program  Notes   Audio  WEBEROverture to Der Freischütz BARBERPiano Concerto TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6, Pathétique Download the full Program Notes Listen to the Podcasts for this series!   About the Music Korean-born conductor Myung-Whun Chung, music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and principal conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic, returns to the BSO podium for the first time since 1996. He is joined by the estimable American pianist Garrick Ohlsson for Samuel Barber’s robust Piano Concerto. The overture to the proto-Romantic German composer Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz opens the program with dramatic power. Tchaikovsky’s masterful Symphony No. 6 is full of intensely beautiful music, ending with a slow, deeply dramatic, and emotionally poignant finale.

 The Globe review may not quite be "scathing," but the reviewer was definitely dissatisfied.http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2011/11/11/chung-keeps-bso-edge/bhHxKAe0hQryiVnY5IHbmL/story.html
As for me, in the first place I was very pleased to have the Weber piece played at all, so I gave a hearty "Bravo" at the end. The piano concerto was okay. But overall, the pieces I'm familiar with weren't as gripping as other performances I've heard, whether live or on record. They played the notes, and the conductor got some almost inaudible pianissimos from the orchestra, which is all to the good, but there wasn't quite enough menace or joyful surge in the "Freischütz" overture; and in the Tchaikovsky, the march wasn't stirring, and the finale somehow petered out rather than dying away.

But I'll still listen on the radio. I want to hear the Weber about as often as I can, and I'd like another shot at the Barber. Perhaps tonight's performance will be a notch or two above Thursday's. You can all listen at 995allclassical.org