BSO/Classical New England — 2021/01/16

 A rebroadcast of the concert of February 13, 2016, concludes the Shakespeare Festival from that year. WCRB says:

Saturday at 8pm, Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in music inspired by "Romeo and Juliet," "Macbeth," and "Othello," as well as the world premiere of "Sonnets," by George Tsontakis, featuring BSO English horn player Robert Sheena.

Saturday, January 16, 2021
8:00 PM

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Robert Sheena, English horn

STRAUSS Macbeth, Op. 23
DVORAK Othello Overture, Op. 93
TSONTAKIS Sonnets (world premiere; BSO commission)
TCHAIKOVSKY Romeo and Juliet, Overture-Fantasy after Shakespeare

This concert is no longer available on-demand.

Composer George Tsontakis, BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons, and soloist Robert Sheena talk with Harvard University's Thomas Kelly about Sonnets:

There is a link on that page for the conversation about "Sonnets."

At the time of the broadcast, I wrote the following (editing out the parts that no longer apply):

The Shakespeare festival concludes this week. Go to the orchestra's program detail page [has the following] description of the program[…]:

Completing the BSO's three-program celebration of Shakespeare's work, Andris Nelsons and BSO English horn player Robert Sheena give the world premiere of New York-based composer George Tsontakis's Sonnets, Concerto for English horn and orchestra, inspired by several of Shakespeare's poems. Tsontakis's music is dynamically expressive and architecturally satisfying. Shakespeare's tragedies inspired the other three works on the program. Tchaikovsky'salternately aggressive and love-struck Romeo and Juliet needs no introduction; much less familiar is Strauss's overtly dramatic Macbeth, the composer's first tone poem. Dvořák's Othello Overture conveys the passions of love and its darker emotions.

(Some emphasis added.)

As so often happens, they don't list things in the order they're performed. The concert opens with the Strauss Macbeth, followed by Dvořák's Othello. After the intermission we get the Tsontakis Sonnets, and the concert concludes with the Tchaikovsky.

I was there on Thursday and have no complaints. The Strauss Macbeth was worth hearing, as was the Dvořák Othello. While Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet is given too often, it isn't bad. All three seemed well performed. The Tsontakis Sonnets at a few points made me think of bits of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, which I guess means that the musical style is fairly accessible. You won't mistake it for Haydn, but you won't run screaming from the auditorium, or wherever you radio or computer speakers are located. In each sonnet, the music is softer at the beginning, corresponding to the first quatrian, and it intensifies for the second, and more so for the third. The it calms down for the final couplet. Glancing at the texts in the program notes, I could see some connection between the music and the theme of the sonnet. The BSO has posted a video of a bit of the second sonnet. It gives as good an impression of the piece as you can in a short time.

There's a favorable review in the Boston Globe, with a bit more description of the new piece, as well as references to some elements of the festival outside the regular concerts. The Boston Musical Intelligencer reviewer is even more enthusiastic about the Tsontakis piece than the Globe. Additional information about the new piece is in this article from The Arts Fuse  with some words from Robert Sheena.

So by all means, listen to the broadcast or the streaming of the concert […] over WCRB on Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time[…].

Enjoy.

 Need I say more?