BSO/Classical New England — 2018/09/29

This week, as we look forward to the return of the BSO for the 2018-19 season (with the first Saturday concert on October 13), WCRB will rebroadcast and stream the concert of March 11, 2017. I hadn't heard it previously, but I posted about it at the time, and you can check out the links there, including a review. The performance detail page described it as follows:

Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo and Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein return to Symphony Hall, joining the BSO and the men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for the visionary Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni's monumental Piano Concerto, a fascinating but rarely heard work of Mahlerian scope dating from the first years of the 20th century. These are the first BSO performances. (Future BSO conductor Karl Muck led the premiere in Berlin in 1904.) Opening the program is a very different sort of piece from the same era, Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 3, a sunny, open work with numerous touches of folk-music simplicity.

(Emphasis added.)

As at the time, I still think it's well worth listening to, 8:00 p.m., EDST, September 29.

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/09/22

This week's rebroadcast on WCRB is the concert of February 25, 2017: a triple concerto by Sofia Gubaidulina which was receiving its premiere performances and Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony. I wrote about it at the time and, as you can see, thought it was good. The synopsis on the orchestra's performance detail page is as follows:

The Russian-born Sofia Gubaidulina, acclaimed as one of the most significant composers in the world today, was encouraged in her career early on by Dmitri Shostakovich. She wrote her Triple Concerto (a BSO co-commission receiving its world premiere at these concerts) for the unusual combination of violin, cello, and bayan, a type of accordion often employed by Gubaidulina and a mainstay of Russian folk music. Joining Latvian violinist Baiba Skride are Dutch cellist Harriet Krijgh and Swiss bayanist Elsbeth Moser, both making their BSO debuts. Shostakovich wrote his Seventh Symphony, Leningrad, as a tribute to the peoples' fortitude in the face of the German Army's long and destructive siege of that city during World War II. Serge Koussevitzky led the first U.S. concert performances of the piece with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in August 1942, following the NBC Symphony's radio broadcast premiere under Toscanini the previous month. The present performances continue Andris Nelsons' and the BSO's survey of the complete Shostakovich symphonies, which are being recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.

(Some emphasis added.)

I'll be in Boston this evening attending Odyssey Opera's performance of "La reine de Saba" by Gounod. If you can't be there, I think this concert will be worth (re)hearing this evening at 8:00 EDST.

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/09/15

This week WCRB gives us a rebroadcast/stream of the concert of February 18, 2017. The BSO's program description page at the time had this to say:

Andris Nelsons and Emanuel Ax team up for one of the pianist's favorites, Mozart's gregarious, large-scale Piano Concerto in E-flat, K.482, composed in late 1785 when Mozart was also working on his comic opera The Marriage of Figaro. The American composer Gunther Schuller wrote his kaleidoscopic Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee in 1959. Each of its movements is based on a different Klee work, inspiring from the composer a wealth of styles ranging from the blues to mysterious modernism. Closing the program is Beethoven's revolutionary Symphony No. 3,Eroica, which radically expanded the boundaries of the symphonic genre.

(Some emphasis added.)

I wrote about it at the time (with links to reviews) and found it all worth listening to, even the Schuller. The link to the gallery of Klee paintings may not be working in my post, so here it is again. So enjoy this evening at 8:00, Boston Time.

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/09/08

There is always a hiatus between the Tanglewood season and the Symphony Hall Season of the Boston Symphony. At this point, the orchestra is on a European tour. Meanwhile, WCRB is resuming their custom of rebroadcasting and streaming recent concerts. This month they are giving us concerts from 2017. This week it is the concert of February 11, 2017. I wrote about it at the time. Here's the synopsis from the program detail page:

Andris Nelsons is joined by countertenor Bejun Mehta and the Boston-based Lorelei Ensemble in the BSO's first performances of esteemed English composer George Benjamin's Dream of the Song, commissioned by the BSO for the 75th anniversary of the Tanglewood Music Center. Opening the program is Ravel's colorful orchestral version of his solo piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, inspired in part by the French Baroque composer François Couperin. Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, his first masterpiece, is innovative in form, remarkably forward-thinking in its use of the orchestra, and quintessentially Romantic in its depiction of an artist's unrequited love.

(Some emphasis added.)

The Ravel and Berlioz are standards of the repertoire and should be good. I don't recall the Benjamin piece. The program notes give some idea of what to expect, if you don't want to just experience it as something new.

As usual, the show begins at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time.

WCRB — 2018/09/01

There is no listing at WCRB for any Boston Symphony concert this evening. I don't know if somebody missed the date when putting together the schedule for the weeks between Tanglewood and the opening of the season at Symphony Hall, or if the gap is deliberate. But there you have it. Concert rebroadcasts resume next week.