Saturday, October 10, 2020

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/10/10

This evening WCRB encores the concert of February 29, 2020. I was at the Thursday performance, but I was away that weekend and didn't post about it before I left. Here's what the performance detail page says:

Costa Rican conductor and frequent BSO guest Giancarlo Guerrero returns to lead soloist Johannes Moser in the first BSO performances since 1997 of English composer William Walton’s Cello Concerto, which Gregor Piatigorsky premiered with the orchestra in 1957 under Charles Munch. Opening the concert is the young British composer Helen Grime’s Limina, a BSO commission to be premiered at Tanglewood in 2019. Although French composer Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem is frequently performed in Europe and the U.S., its only previous complete BSO performances were in November 1983. Duruflé was one of Paris’s great church organists of the 20th century. His lovely and often powerful Requiem setting, which features organ, is based firmly on the tradition of Catholic liturgical music.

(Some emphasis added.)

The reviewer in the Globe was generally pleased with the performance. He found the Walton, although20th Century music, quite non-threatening, and the Durufle a gem. The Intelligencer was disappointed in the Grimes, quite satisfied with the Walton, and very pleased with the Durufle, finding the latter two well performed. It seems the trouble with the Grimes was more with the music itself than with how it was played.

Overall, it seems likely you'll enjoy the Walton and the Durufle. Why not see what the curtain raiser from Grime is really like. You can have it all by tuning in to WCRB on air or via internet this evening at 8:00, Boston Time.

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