BSO — 2021/10/02

 Live, from Symphony Hall, it's the Boston Symphony Orchestra!

That's right, folks: the BSO 2021-22 subscription season has begun with concerts in front of live audiences. Oprning night was Thursday, and we get to hear the program performed again this evening.

Here's the synopsis from WCRB, who will transmit it via radio and internet:

Saturday, October 2, 2021
8:00 PM

In a return to concerts at Symphony Hall after 19 months, Anne-Sophie Mutter is the soloist in John Williams’s Violin Concerto No. 2, led by the composer, and Andris Nelsons conducts Beethoven and Bartók, live on Saturday night at 8pm.

Andris Nelsons and John Williams, conductors
Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin

BEETHOVEN Overture, The Consecration of the House
John WILLIAMS Violin Concerto No. 2
BARTÓK Concerto for Orchestra

More is available through various links at the BSO's performance detail page, which describes the proceedings thus:

Led by both Music Director Andris Nelsons and Boston Pops Conductor Laureate John Williams, the BSO presents a special pair of concerts to welcome back live audiences to Symphony Hall after a nearly 20-month absence. Opening the concert, Mr. Nelsons leads Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture, the first work ever performed by the BSO in 1881. Mr. Williams then takes the podium for the first Boston performances of his own Violin Concerto No. 2, written for superstar violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, which she premiered at Tanglewood in 2021. Completing the program is Bartók’s uniquely dramatic Concerto for Orchestra, one of the BSO’s most famous commissions, originally premiered by Serge Koussevitzky in 1944.

I was there on Thursday, and I found the Beethoven very enjoyable. It's a fine piece, and they played it well. The Williams violin concerto was unenjoyable. As the Boston Globe reviewer says, it's too long. Worse than that, I didn't detect any musicality in it. In a way, I suppose, it showcased Ms. Mutter's talent, but it seemed incoherent. Where were the themes? Where was the development? At least the sounds weren't unpleasant to hear. For an encore, they played an arrangement of something by Williams from "The Long Goodbye," which had a tune and was nice to hear.

The Bartók concerto is something I've heard a number of times. It's one of the BSO's signature pieces. Thanks to the program notes, (which I recommend reading, especially the actual description of the piece toward the end) I was able to follow it better than on previous occasions, and I found it interesting to listen to as the elements referred to in the program notes unfolded. Even though it's "modern music," it was pretty good — certainly way better than the Williams piece.

The reviewer in the Boston Musical Intelligencer really liked the Williams violin concerto — both the work and the performance — although even he at one point used the word "bewildering" to describe it. He seemed to think the other pieces were not performed vigorously enough, but didn't detect any actual mistakes.

The Globe reviewer didn't want to be crowded in with all those people, even though they were all vaccinated and masked. She spent a lot of time complaining about it. Apart from not liking the Williams, she was unenthusiastic about the performances given the other two pieces, although she had no specific criticisms. She just wished she weren't there.

But you don't have to be there to enjoy the return of the BSO to Symphony Hall. Just go to WCRB at 8:00 this evening, Boston Time (EDT) and enjoy (at least the first and last pieces flawlessly, if unspectacularly, performed). The BSO is back!