BSO/Classical New England — 2021/05/29

 There seems to be a typo in WCRB's synopsis of this evening's rebroadcast. They begin by saying that it is from 2017, but at the end they identify two concerts from 2016 as the originals. Consulting my posts, I see that the music in question was indeed performed in 2016 on the dates mentioned.

Saturday, May 29, 2021
8:00 PM

In an encore broadcast from 2017, Andris Nelsons leads the BSO in Brahms's boldly dramatic Symphony No. 1 and ruminative Symphony No. 3.

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor

BRAHMS Symphony No. 1
BRAHMS Symphony No. 3

Encore broadcast from November 10 and 17, 2016

I'll also note that November 10 and 17, 2016, were Thursdays. The Brahms First Symphony concluded the concert on the 10th, and the Third was given on the 17th. In both cases, other works preceded them, but neither had been scheduled for the following Saturday. So I don't see much point in reproducing what I wrote for each of the Saturdays. Instead, I'll give you links to the available reviews.

The Globe reviewed the first concert, as did the Intelligencer.

Here's the Globe on the concert of November 15, which was reprised on the 17th. The Intelligencer review concentrates on the first two pieces and says only this about the Third Symphony: "Nelsons then led the orchestra in a thrilling and a tuneful reading of Brahms’s  Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90 (1883). For all the music’s inherent excitement, I missed the careful attention to inner voices, the contrapuntal building blocks of Brahms’s compositional rhetoric. Leaping from peak to peak obscures value when the valleys disappear. While many in Symphony Hall reveled, I  left craving more."

You may recall that recently WCRB  gave us two complete concerts from the Brahms mini-festival. Those were an April 10 and 17, so if you really want to see my posts from 2016, you can take a look at what I posted last month.

Anyway, The Brahms symphonies qualify as "warhorses," so if you're listening to WCRB at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time this evenings, you'll probably enjoy the show.