BSO — 2024/03/09

 This evening the BSO presents Grieg's music for Peer Gynt with actors performing scenes of the play, as WCRB informs us:

Saturday, March 9, 2024
8:00pm

Encore broadcast on Monday, March 18

In the second BSO concert of the Music of the Midnight Sun Festival, Dima Slobodeniouk leads a performance of Peer Gynt by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and composer Edvard Grieg, reimagined by playwright and director Bill Barclay. This fantastical epic tale follows Peer from his home village through the Hall of the Mountain King to Northern Africa and back. 

Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor 
Georgia Jarman, soprano
Actors from Concert Theatre Works 
Tanglewood Festival Chorus

Edvard GRIEG Peer Gynt

For notes and a synopsis, visit the BSO.

Hear producer, writer, and director Bill Barclay describe the unique challenges of adapting Peer Gynt in an interview with Jared Bowen on GBH's The Culture Show.

To hear a preview of Peer Gynt with conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, use the player above, and read the transcript below.

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Dima Slobodeniouk, who's back in Boston for a presentation really, of Peer Gynt. I don't want to say performance. It's really a presentation, this theatrical adaptation

You can also read about it at the BSO's performance detail page:

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor 
Georgia Jarman, soprano 
Actors from Concert Theatre Works
Caleb Mayo (Peer Gynt) 
Bobbie Steinbach (Åse) 
Robert Walsh (Button Moulder / Father of the Groom) 
Will Lyman (Voice of The Boyg) 
Risher Reddick (The Mountain King / Mads Moen / Herr Trumpetterstrale / Hussein) 
Caroline Lawton (Woman in Green / Aslak’s Wife / Herr von Eberkopf) 
Daniel Berger-Jones (Aslak / Mr. Cotton / Begriffenfeldt) 
Kortney Adams (Ingrid / Monsieur Ballon / Anitra) 
Vidar Skrede (Hardanger fiddler) 
Tanglewood Festival Chorus 
 James Burton, conductor 

GRIEG Peer Gynt 
written and directed by Bill Barclay adapted from the play by Henrik Ibsen

Please note that there is no intermission in these concerts.

This week's performances by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus are supported by the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Fund for Voice and Chorus.

In the second of the Music of the Midnight Sun concerts, Finland-based Russian conductor Dima Slobodeniouk leads a staged performance of Peer Gynt, by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and composer Edvard Grieg. This fantastical, epic tale, theatrically reimagined by director-playwright Bill Barclay, follows Peer on his adventures from his home village through the Hall of the Mountain King, to Northern Africa, and back. 

Music of the Midnight Sun is supported, in part by the American Scandinavian Foundation.

Fun fact: Caleb Mayo, who plays Peer Gynt is from my home town.

I saw a performance when the show was first given, and he did very well. The show was enjoyable to watch. I'm not sure how well it will translate to radio, but having the dialogue to flesh out the music should add something to our understanding of what the music's all about.

The review in the Globe is long on description, but favorable to the performance and performers. The Intelligencer doesn't have a review of this perfomance, but the review from 2017 gives a very good description on the action that takes place (as well as "Egmont" which is not being given this time).

All in all, I recommend giving it a hearing this evening and/or on March 18.