BSO — 2023/01/21

Tonight's BSO concert is all unfamiliar, but not really bad. Here's WCRB's description (with links):

Saturday January 21, 2023
8:00 PM

Encore broadcast on Monday, January 30

Karina Canellakis takes up her baton at Symphony Hall for the very first time in a folk-inspired Boston Symphony program that features Dvořák’s The Wood Dove and Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, and Nicola Benedetti makes her BSO debut with Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 2.

Karina Canellakis, conductor
Nicola Benedetti, violin

DVOŘÁK The Wood Dove
SZYMANOWSKI Violin Concerto No. 2
LUTOSŁAWSKI Concerto for Orchestra

To hear a preview of the program with Karina Canellakis, use the player above, and read the transcript below.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Karina Canellakis, who is here to conduct the Boston Symphony for the first time in this space, though, Karina, you have conducted the BSO a couple of t

Further information is available, as always, at the BSO performance detail page:

Making her BSO debut, violinist Nicola Benedetti joins conductor Karina Canellakis in her Symphony Hall debut for Karel Szymanowski’s scintillating Violin Concerto No. 2 from 1933, his last major work. His compatriot Witold Lutosławski’s folk-music influenced Concerto for Orchestra (1954) helped establish his international reputation. Antonín Dvořák’s nature-inspired tone poem Wood Dove has not been played by the BSO since 1905.

Check out the program notes for fuller descriptions of the pieces.

I was there on Thursday, and didn't find anythin too terrible. Dvořák is always pretty good, and "The Wood Dove" is no exception, despite the lurid program note. I'm always apprehensive about Szymanowski and Lutosławski, This time, the Szymanowski wasn't as dissonant as other things of his that I've heard. The piece by Lutosławski was bombastic  at one point I thought of Shostakovich  but it was a notch or so above tolerable.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer gives a very favorable and wordy review. The Globe review is enthusiastic and more descriptive.

SO the reviewers give two thumbs up, and I don't disagree, so I suggest listening in. If you miss it this evening or want to rehear it, the concert will be rebroadcast/streamed om Janiary 30 at 8:00 p.m.