BSO/Classical New England — 2020/09/26

It looks as if WCRB has a pattern, for now. This week's encore broadcast is from January 26, 2020. Last week's, was from January 18, and I think the previous two were also from January. Pattern or no, I was very hurried back on January 25. Here's all I wrote:

The Dvořák is a familiar "warhorse." The stuff before the intermission could be interesting. Performance detail says:

Continuing the BSO’s cycle of music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts Rudolf Barshai’s string-orchestra arrangement of the composer’s Eighth String Quartet, Op. 110 (1960), which the composer suggested was his most autobiographical work. (Barshai was an important conductor and champion of Shostakovich’s music; Op. 110a was the first and most important of several arrangements of Shostakovich’s string quartets.) Completing the program are Samuel Barber’s Medea’s Mediation and Dance of Vengeance, a 15-minute concert work excerpted from a 1946 ballet score for the choreographer Martha Graham, and Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the most important piece he composed during his years in the U.S., when he was director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The beloved four-movement symphony uses musical elements shared by both North American and Czech folk music

(Some emphasis added.)

It's too late for me to find and link reviews. It's on WCRB this evening [at 8:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight time] ….

Now I have time to look for reviews. The one in the Intelligencer is a rave, above all for the Dvořák. The Globe was decidedly less enthusiastic, but didn't find anything really wrong. It may be that the Saturday performance —the one we'll hear and the one reviewed in the Intelligencer — was that much better than the one the Globe reviewer heard on Thursday night.

Anyway, enjoy.