BSO/Classical New England — 2020/03/28

This week's concert is an "encore presentation" of the all-Wagner concert of April 7,  2018. The performance detail page had this to say about it:

Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is a hymn to the intense spirituality that accompanies transcendent earthly love. Musically and operatically innovative, it remains a watershed in the history of music; to hear its music live is an unforgettable experience. Andris Nelsons leads an outstanding cast of singers-including the great German tenor Jonas Kaufmann (taking the role of Tristan for the very first time) and the acclaimed Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund-in Act II of the opera, in which the title characters come together under the spell of a love potion, only to be discovered by King Marke, Tristan's uncle and lord, to whom Isolde is betrothed. The concert opens with one of Wagner's few purely instrumental works still heard today, the Siegfried Idyll, which he composed in 1869 and had performed as a surprise birthday gift for his wife Cosima. The "Siegfried" of the title is the couple's son, born the previous June, though Wagner later incorporated some of the Idyll's music into the third of his Ring operas, Siegfried.

(Some emphasis added.)

The reviews in the Globe and the Intelligencer are mildly unenthusiastic about Nylund and Kaufmann's performances. Still, it's a chance to hear them sing the roles for the first time anywhere.

As I've commented before, I generally find Wagner's writing for singers dull and uninteresting (after "Flying Dutchman, that is), while the orchestral music can be quite enjoyable. So I won't be terribly disappointed to have my brother's phone call from Japan take me away from most of the operatic performance. Based on the reviews, though, it would be good to be through in time to hear King Marke's monologue toward the end. And the Siegfried Idyll, which opens the show is pleasant listening.

You can hear it and decide for yourself by listening to WCRB tonight at 8:00, Boston Time. The usual rebroadcast  — on the second Monday following the concert — won't happen. They're giving a different BSO concert every evening except Sunday for the next three weeks. Check the website for details.

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/03/21

The BSO has unsurprisingly cancelled the rest of their season, and WCRB has decided to give us BSO concerts six nights a week, beginning on Monday, March 23.. (They have other programming on Sunday evenings, which you might like to check out.) They will be presenting encore broadcasts of concerts conducted by Music Director Andris Nelsons. There's a link on their homepage. While this evening's concert is not listed as part of the series, it is de facto as they present the concert of March 31, 2014.

I posted about it at the time. The performance detail page has this description:

Andris Nelsons leads the American premiere of Partita, a new work co-commissioned by the BSO and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig from esteemed German composer Jörg Widmann, whose powerful Trauermarschfor piano and orchestra was performed by Maestro Nelsons and the BSO with Yefim Bronfman in the fall of 2016. To conclude this program, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and BSO principal violist Steven Ansell are spotlighted in Richard Strauss's picaresque tour-de-force Don Quixote, a tone poem whose episodes illustrate scenes from Cervantes' famous novel. Opening these concerts is Mozart's brief, rarely performed Symphony No. 23, written in 1773 when he was just seventeen.

(Some emphasis added.)

The links to the reviews in the Boston Globe and the Boston Musical Intelligencer still work. On WCRB's page about the concert there are links to an audio interview of Yo-Yo Ma and Brian McCreath, and a video of Ma and Andris Nelsons talking about "Don Quixote."

You can hear it over WCRB this evening at 8:00, Boston Time. Enjoy!

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/03/14

My apologies for not posting about the past two weekends' concerts. I was away on February 29 and too busy with preparations for the trip (a weekend retreat) to make a post. A week ago, basically I got distracted with other activities (shopping, meal preparation, meetings) that I forgot to post.

Last Saturday's concert was worth hearing, so I recommend catching the rebroadcast on March 16 at 8:00 p.m. Boston Time (EDST). It included a recent piece by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, a Prokofiev piano concerto, and a Sibelius Symphony. See the performance detail page for more information. There was a favorab;e review in the Intelligencer; the Globe review was mixed.

Now on to the business at hand. The BSO had no concert scheduled this weekend, so WCRB is reaching into their archive to bring us the concert of Saturday, August 18, 2019, at Tanglewood. Here's what they say about it:

Saturday night at 8, in an encore broadcast from the 2019 Tanglewood season, Kirill Gerstein is the soloist in the mighty Piano Concerto No. 2 by Brahms, and François-Xavier Roth leads the BSO in Schumann's Symphony No. 2.

Saturday, March 14, 2020
(encore broadcast Monday, March 23)
8:00 PM

Boston Symphony Orchestra
François-Xavier Roth, conductor
Kirill Gerstein, piano

BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 2

And here's a link to the performance detail page. It was favorably reviewed in the Globe.

So enjoy.

BTW, the orchestra has cancelled its concerts for the rest of March, so we'll be getting rebroadcasts for (at least) the next two weeks.