BSO — 2014/04/25-26

It's last night at Symphony. Strangely, the program yesterday and today is not all the same as what they played on Tuesday and Thursday. Maybe it has to do with the upcoming tour — wanting to prepare some pieces for it. Anyway this evening, Charles Dutoit leads the orchestra in the Overture to Russlan and Ludmila by Glinka, followed by Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with Behzod Abduraimov as soloist. After the intermission, the orchestra will play the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz. The BSO performance detail page gives the usual links to program notes, audio previews, and performer bios (click on the pics). It describes this concert as follows:

Post-Concert Reception!
Join us in Higginson Hall for a free post-concert reception immediately following the performance for snacks and beverages.

To close the BSO's 2013-14 subscription season, Charles Dutoit leads another program showcasing the orchestra's stylistically wide-ranging virtuosity. These concerts open with the breathless overture to Glinka's 1842 opera Ruslan and Ludmila, followed by Rachmaninoff's ever-popular Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, again featuring the young Uzbek-born pianist Behzod Abduraimov. The program closes with a work central to the BSO's repertoire, Berlioz's innovative Symphonie fantastique. Berlioz's orchestral depiction of a disturbed lover dreaming of his inamorata is a seminal work of musical Romanticism.

On Thursday, I was there for a program which had the Rachmaninoff, but began with Moussorgsky's Night on Bare Mountain and ended with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. The Boston Globe's review of that program has more background than actual review, but does have a favorable impression of the soloist in the Paganini and seems content with the rest. As is often the case, the Boston Musical Intelligencer went into greater detail. The reviewer articulated my vague feelings, especially about the Moussorgsky seeming somehow tame.

As of this writing, neither the Globe nor the Intelligencer has published a review of the Glinka and the Berlioz, so you can listen to WCRB, beginning at 8:00 this evening, without having your expectations for those pieces colored by a review, but looking forward to a treat with the Paganini. If I notice reviews of this program, I'll post links either here or in a fresh post. WCRB's BSO page has a link to an interview with the young Uzbek pianist Bezhod Abduraimov. As usual, the rebraodcast of this concert will take place in nine days, on Monday, May 5.

This coming Monday will provide a rebroadcast/stream of the concert of a week ago. After a rebroadcast of last year's season finale, they'll give us the concerts of March 8 (on May 10 and 19) and March 14 (on May 17 and 26). Meanwhile, the Boston Pops will have been performing at Symphony Hall, and Saturdays and Mondays beginning after these final BSO broadcasts will give us recordings of some of those concerts until the Tanglewood season begins on July 5.

Happy listening.