BSO/Classical New England — 2021/06/26

 WCRB posts the following:

Saturday, June 26, 2021
8:00 PM

In an encore broadcast from 2017, Leonidas Kavakos is the soloist in Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2, and Andris Nelsons and the BSO traverse the mountainous panorama of Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Leonidas Kavakos, violin

Derek BERMEL Elixir
PROKOFIEV Violin Concerto No. 2
STRAUSS An Alpine Symphony

When I posted about it, I hadn't heard it, and I can't recall it now. So here, FWIW, ia what I said on December 12, 2017:

After this evening, the Boston Symphony gives way to Holiday Pops until January. In December, WCRB will give rebroadcasts of three concerts from last summer at Tanglewood and, on December 23, Christmas-themed music conducted by Seiji Ozawa. For now, I'll let the BSO's performance detail page tell us about this evening's concert, which will be under the baton of Music Director Andris Nelsons.

Greek-born violinist Leonidas Kavakos returns to Symphony Hall as soloist in Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2. Composed in the mid-1930s, the concerto is by turns beautifully lyrical and scintillatingly virtuosic, with a Spanish-flavored finale as a nod to Madrid, where the work was premiered in 1935. Opening these concerts is American composer Derek Bermel's "spectral love potion" Elixir, which combines colorfully tranquil music for strings with exuberant, Messiaen-like exclamations from wind instruments deployed throughout the auditorium. Completing the program is Richard Strauss's cinematic tone poem An Alpine Symphony, illustrating an excursion up, then down (at a faster pace!) a mountain, with a huge range of instrumental and compositional effects.

(Some emphasis added.)

You can get the usual descriptive material, including program notes, via the usual links on that page.

I wasn't there on Thursday so we have to rely on the reviews in the Globe (brief, satisfied), and Boston Musical Intelligencer (extensive, metaphor laden, grandiloquent, approving) for insights into the performances, while the orchestra's program notes tell about the music as composed.

It'll be interesting to hear what the Bermel piece actually sounds like, although the program notes suggest you really need to be in the auditorium to get the full effect. But I'm looking forward to hearing it over WCRB at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Since I'm not a great fan of Strauss, I won't mind missing the Alpine Symphony when my brother calls from Tokyo. […]

The links still work.

This isn't exactly "must listen" in my book, but it should be okay if you decide to tune in. I'll probably listen to the first part to refresh my memory, and If my brother weren't going to call I'd listen to the Strauss as well despite my lack of enthusiasm. It does have its striking elements.