BSO — 2025/03/08

 This evening we are treated the three unknown (to me, anyway) pieces. WCRB gives us the outline and an interview with the soloist:

Saturday, March 8, 2025
8:00 PM

South Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim makes her BSO debut conducting a trio of pieces exploring innovation within tradition. Inon Barnatan is the soloist in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto, a love letter to his wife and his home country. The program opens with Anatoly Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake and concludes with Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3.

Eun Sun Kim, conductor
Inon Barnatan, piano

Anatoly LIADOV The Enchanted Lake
Béla BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 3
Sergei RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 3

In an interview with BSO broadcast host Brian McCreath, Inon Barnatan describes the vitality and variety of Bartók's music, what fascinates him about the Third Piano Concerto, and his approach to his artistic leadership of the La Jolla Music Society's Summerfest. To listen, use the player above, and read the transcript below.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Inon Barnatan, back with the Boston Symphony to perform

The BSO's program detail page furnishes a bit more of an introduction as well as links to the program notes, which could be interesting reading:

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

Eun Sun Kim, conductor
Inon Barnatan, piano

LIADOV The Enchanted Lake
BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 3
-Intermission-
RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 3

South Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim makes her BSO debut with a trio of pieces exploring innovation within tradition. Star pianist Inon Barnatan returns to Symphony Hall to take on one of Bartók’s final works, the Third Piano Concerto, a love letter to his wife and his home country. While living in poverty in New York having fled the onslaught of the Nazis into Hungary, Bartók’s creativity had stalled out, and his body was failing from a long illness. The concerto — not quite finished when he passed — is a more gentle and accessibly poetic work than his previous concertos, a summation of where Bartók’s style left him at the end of his life.

The Boston Globe doesn't seem to have provided a review. The reviewer in the Intelligencer had no complaints.

More I cannot tell you, but I'm looking forward to hearing this unfamiliar music.