BSO — 2022/01/15

 Here's WCRB's synopsis of this evening's BSO concert:

Saturday, January 15, and Monday, January 24, 2022
8:00 PM

Saturday at 8pm, French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet is the soloist in Liszt's acrobatic Piano Concerto No. 2, plus Andris Nelsons conducts an American premiere by Augusta Read Thomas and Beethoven's Symphony No. 4.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Augusta READ THOMAS Dance Foldings (American premiere)
LISZT Piano Concerto No. 2
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4

The BSO program detail page puts it thus:

Music Director Andris Nelsons leads the BSO and a frequent collaborator, the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, in a passionate and virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 2 by Franz Liszt — who himself was considered the most brilliant performer of the 19th century Romantic era. These concerts open with the American premiere of Augusta Read Thomas' Dance Foldings, which Thomas describes as “like jazz big band with Stravinsky ballets.” Closing the program is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, one of the composer’s sunniest and most congenial works.

I was there on Thursday and found the "Dance Foldings" unexciting but not hard to listen to except for occasional high-pitched screeches from the trumpets. Maybe they won't be so bad filtered through the raio system. It helped that Ms Thomas described her music as influenced by Duke Ellington & Ella Fitzgerald and by Stravinsky's early ballets (apparently meaning Petrouchka and Firebird). You may also want to rwad the program note for the piece (and even the others).

The Globe's review is mainly off topic of the music itself, but it's favorable. The review in the Intelligencer is more to the point and quite favorable.

At 8:00 this evening and/or on the 24th you can see what you think.