Naturgesetz: Music Lover

BSO — 2012/01/26-31 Info and Reviews

2012-01-28T15:03:00.002-05:00

This week we have just one piece on the Boston Symphony program, Lobgesang, or "Song of Praise," by Felix Mendelssohn.

Here's a bit from the BSO website, with more available at the link.

Conductor Bramwell Tovey will lead the orchestra January 26-31 in Mendelssohn's Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, with sopranos Carolyn Sampson and Camilla Tilling, tenor John Tessier, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Mendelssohn wrote this big work in 1840 for a three-day festival in Leipzig celebrating the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's movable-type printing method. This will be only the second time the BSO has performed the complete work at Symphony Hall; the fist was under Seiji Ozawa in 1988. The BSO's only performance prior to that took place in Pittsburg, PA, under Arthur Nikisch in May of 1890!

I really enjoyed the performance on Thursday evening. Mendelssohn's music is very "accessible." Like me, the Boston Globe's reviewer found it well performed by chorus and orchestra. I'd even call it exhilarating.

So I think you're in for a treat if you listen to the broadcast/stream on Classical New England this evening or tomorrow afternoon or on demand over the next two weeks. The link also gives access to an interview with the conductor.

(I suppose at the time Mendelssohn wrote the piece, he thought of the "night" which Gutenberg helped dispel with his invention of movable type as being the pre-Reformation era, but that was then and this is now.)

BSO — 2012/01/19-24 Info and Reviews

2012-01-21T00:35:00.001-05:00

This week's scheduled conductor, Ricardo Chailly, bowed out because of health reasons. Giancarlo Guerrero takes over conducting duties for "The Rite of Spring," by Stravinsky, which concludes the concert. But the orchestra threw out the pieces originally scheduled for before the intermission, and chose instead to play four pieces without a conductor — two for the brass section and percussion, one for woodwinds and horns, and one just for strings. The BSO website lists them as follows:

The Boston Symphony Orchestra itself will be showcased on the first half of the BSO program of January 19-24, originally to have been conducted by Riccardo Chailly, when it performs-without a conductor-music for brass, for winds, and for strings: Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man and the "Procession du Vendredi-saint" ("Good Friday Procession") from French composer Henri Tomasi's Fanfares liturgiques for brass and percussion; Richard Strauss's Serenade in E-flat, Op. 7, for winds; and Tchaikovsky's Serenade in C for Strings, Op. 48. Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero will then step in for Riccardo Chailly on the second half of the program to lead Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which was originally scheduled to conclude these concerts. The works on the first half of the program will be introduced by members of the BSO's brass, wind, and string sections.

Visit this page for links to additional information.

I was there on Thursday, and found it all pretty good. They kept together pretty well without a conductor, I thought, and the pieces before intermission were worth hearing. Of course, we know the Copland and Tchaikovsky. Tomasi was born in 1901, so he's a contemporary of Copland. Someone near me remarked that his piece for a procession is similar to Respighi's piece in "The Pines of Rome" depicting the march of Roman Legion on the Appian Way. "The Rite of Spring" is no longer really shocking, and I thought it was done cleanly. The Boston Globe reviewer had some criticism of a couple of details, but was overall favorable.

Listening opportunities on Saturday and Sunday are as usual.

BSO — 2012/01/12-17 Info and Reviews

2012-01-14T18:20:00.005-05:00

Three Warhorses and a World Premiere

This weeks Boston Symphony program begins with the Overture to "Euryanthe", by Carl Maria von Weber, followed by Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Leif Ove Andsnes as soloist. After the intermission we have the world premiere performances of John Harbison's Symphony No. 6, which was commissioned by the BSO and is dedicated to former Music Director James Levine, who secured the commission. Soloist in the first movement is Paula Murrihy, mezzo-soprano. The final work on the program is "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks", by Richard Strauss. Conductor is David Zinman.

As usual, the BSO website has additional info, including the program notes for the four pieces and audio previews of the three "warhorses." There are also previews with the conductor, the pianist, and the composer at WCRB/Classical New England.

Broadcasts/webstreams are Saturday at 8:00 and Sunday at 1:00 p.m., with the concert available On Demand for two weeks after that. And there are the usual pre-concert features at 7:00 on Saturday.

I was there for the absolute premiere of the Harbison 6th on Thursday evening and again on Friday afternoon. I liked it better than his 5th symphony, which was played earlier this season. The singing in the first movement seemed a bit more lyrical, and although there were cacophonous moments here and there throughout the symphony, there was more that was not unpleasant, with musical figures or themes being repeated, given changed pitch, and developed. I won't be able to listen to the broadcast tonight, but I hope to hear the rebroadcast tomorrow afternoon and record it.

Here's the Boston Globe reviewer's take on the concert, and here's a feature about the Harbison symphony that was published a week ago.

BSO — 2012/01/05-07 — (Back to Normal) Info and Reviews

2012-01-07T14:59:00.002-05:00

This week the Boston Symphony resumes its weekly concerts in Symphony Hall, and Classical New England resumes broadcasts and webstreams. The BSO website isn't offering the brief synopsis we've been used to, but the page on the website devoted to the concert has links to the program notes for each piece. A page on the Classical New England website includes a link to an interview with the conductor, Marcelo Lehninger, an assistant conductor of the BSO, who had two weeks' notice that he would be conducting in place of Andris Nelsons.

The concert consists of Haydn's Symphony No. 88, a 15-minute trumpet concerto titled "From the Wreckage" by British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage (getting its American premiere at these concerts), and "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss. The trumpet soloist is Håkan Hardenberger, for whom the work was commissioned, and who gave the world premiere in 2005.

The Boston Globe reviewer wasn't ecstatic but he seems to have liked the new piece, as well as the performance of the Haydn. Reading between the lines, he seems to have thought that the Strauss didn't go perfectly. I enjoyed the Haydn and found the Turnage interesting. Shortly before the end of the first section, the phrase "easy listening" came to mind. Later bits were less so, but it wasn't unpleasant. The Strauss is what it is — overwhelming beginning, then it meanders along, and I was ready for it to be over five or ten minutes before they stopped playing. I thought the conductor did a great job, given his unfamiliarity with both the Turnage and the Strauss.

So give it a listen, at least the first half, tonight at 8:00 with pre-concert features beginning at 7:00 and/or Sunday at 1:00 p.m. (just the concert).

P.S. WHRB is giving a Bruno Walter Orgy this month. The first part will be on Sunday, January 15, from 3:00 to about 10:30 p.m., and the second part will be the following Sunday, January 22, from 2:30 to about 10:30 p.m.

New Year's Day Concerts

2011-12-31T23:21:00.002-05:00

Classical New England will offer a couple of New Year's Day concerts.

The Vienna Philharmonic's concert* will be broadcast and streamed live at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and retransmitted at 6:00 p.m.

Boston Baroque's concert will also be transmitted live from Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts at 3:00 p.m. "Boston time."

*For those unfamiliar with the tradition at these concerts, there are "always" encores at the end, and these always include the Blue Danube Waltz (which "always" gets a burst of applause after the first note is heard. The music stops and the conductor says, "Die Wiener Philharmoniiler und ich wünschen Ihnen …," and the orchestra shouts, "Prosit Neujahr!" "The Vienna Philharmonic and I wish you …" "Happy New Year" — literally "Cheers! New Year!" Then they play the waltz.) and the Radetzky March.

I'll be in church at 11:00, but I'm planing to listen at 3:00 and 6:00.

Enjoy!

Winter Orgy® Period 2011 — Already in Progress

2011-12-16T00:21:00.001-05:00

My apologies! I wasn't paying attention to WHRB, and the Orgy® Period began a couple of weeks ago. The first classical music orgy was the Percy Grainger Orgy, on December 3. Many of the orgies this year have focused on performers, rather than composers, but at this point, they are in the midst of the Franz Liszt Orgy, which will end Friday evening at 10:00.

Saturday evening there will be an Ivor Novello Orgy from 6:00 to 10:00.

The Carl Maria von Weber Orgy will be Sunday, December 18, from 1:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and Monday from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.. That is the last of the classical music orgies so titled, but on Tuesday from 9:00 a.m. to midnight they will observe the Gian Carlo Menotti Centenary (with "Amahl and the Night Visitors"* reserved until December 24 at 4:30 p.m.); and Wednesday, December 20, they will observe the Nino Rota Centenary from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

All of this is available on the web at the link above.

* I believe I saw the world premiere of this one hour opera, which was a television performance in 1951. I know I saw it on TV back in the early 1950's.

Meanwhile the Boston Symphony went on tour to California for four concerts, and the Boston Pops are giving their holiday concerts for the rest of the month. You may want to check out what WCRB streams in the regular concert times. Last Saturday, they repeated a concert from earlier in the season. Also, this Sunday at 3:00 p.m. they will give a live broadcast/webstream of the Handel and Haydn's "A Bach Christmas" concert, which will include music of other baroque composers as well. I think I'll listen to that — tearing myself away from the Weber Orgy. BSO concerts will again be streamed live beginning on January 7.

Follow-up

2011-12-04T20:28:00.000-05:00

I listened to the Harbison 5th on the radio Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. It reinforced and clarified my impression from Thursday. The symphony is more like a series of "accompagnato" recitatives followed by a duet. He's gone back to Bach. The orchestra supports the declamation of the texts and adds tonal color and emphasis, but there is no memorable melody from singer or instruments. It works very well as a dramatic retelling of the legend, but calling it a symphony is an unusual use of the word.

BSO — 2011/12/01-03 — Info and Reviews

2011-12-03T14:24:00.002-05:00

I was in the audience for the Thursday evening performance of John Harbison's Symphony No. 5 — which could be subtitiled "Orpheus and Eurydice" but hasn't been — with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 and Leonore Overture No. 3 after the intermission. BTW, I had heard the world premiere of the Harbison when the BSO gave it three and a half years ago.

Here's a bit from the BSO website.

Making his BSO debut, Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek is chief conductor of the BBC Symphony and chief conductor designate of the Czech Philharmonic. The program opens with John Harbison's BSO-commissioned Symphony No. 5 (premiered in 2008) for baritone, mezzo-soprano, and orchestra, a dramatic, lyrical work setting poems inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The program's second half features American pianist Jonathan Biss in Beethoven's equally dramatic and lyrical Fourth Piano Concerto. To finish, Beethoven's powerful LeonoreOverture No. 3 offers another musical take on the transportive power of love.

That website page also has links to the program notes and an audio preview. I very much recommend the program note for the Harbison for a good explanation of the piece, including the use of three different poems to cover various facets of the legend.

Perhaps I'll revise my opinion after I hear the Harbison symphony again this evening and tomorrow afternoon, but the hearing on Thursday left me a bit disappointed. The baritone who sings the first two movements and with the mezzo soprano in the fourth had very clear enunciation, so that practically every word could be understood even without looking at the text in the program. The mezzo did almost as well in the third and fourth movements. And the texts were interesting. But the music itself was rarely engaging or even particularly expressive, to my ears. The composer was on hand, as he had been last week, to take a bow from the stage after his symphony. Then he was seated diagonally across from me in the first balcony for the second half. I couldn't help wondering if he was wondering if his symphony would be as much listened to after 200 years as Beethoven's music is today.

I want to like John Harbison's work, so I'll be hoping this symphony will impress me more on my later hearings. The poems have interesting insights into the legend, and at least the music doesn't get in the way of them; and of course Beethoven is always worth hearing. As usual, you can hear it over WCRB/WGBH/Classical New England. In addition to being able to hear the webstream, you can use this link to find a further link to a page where you can hear the composer himself talking about the symphony.

The Globe reviewer seems to have liked the Harbison better than the way the orchestra played the Beethoven.

BSO — 2011/11/25-29 — Info and Reviews

2011-11-25T19:46:00.002-05:00

I went to the BSO today to listen to John Harbison's 4th Symphony. I liked it. He has managed to occupy the middle ground between Beethoven and Babbitt. You can hear it tomorrow at 8:00 p.m Boston time on the webstream from http://www.wgbh.org/995/ with a "pre-game show" at 7:00, or on Sunday at 1:00 without the "pre-game." After that it will be available on demand for two weeks.

They also had a book signing by Ron Della Chiesa, the radio and web announcer of the concerts, for his book "Radio My Way." I got he book and the autograph and had a nice conversation with him while the orchestra was playing a Suite from "Daphnis and Chloë. (I had left the auditorium so as not to overlay the Harbison with the Ravel.) Among other things, I learned that the phrases "Fenway Park of Music" (referring to Symphony Hall), and "pre-game show" are things which the producer, Brian Bell, came up with. I had always thought the they were original with Ron.

To amplify a bit on my statement that "I liked it. He has managed to occupy the middle ground between Beethoven and Babbitt," the work is jagged and episodic, but it has recognizable short themes which get repeated and modified, so I considered it musical. You might want to check out the program notes included on the BSO website, and I'll link the Boston Globe review when it is published. Here it is. He's noncommittal.

Here's the description of the whole concert on the orchestra's website. This page also has links to the program notes for the Ravel and the Mahler.

To open his second program this season, former BSO assistant conductor Ludovic Morlot leads Pulitzer Prizewinning American composer John Harbison's exciting Symphony No. 4. Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 begins with an atmospheric evocation of dawn and ends with the stunning, breathless "danse générale." Mahler's Symphony No. 1 draws on melodies that reflect the folk music and natural environment of the composer's native central Europe.

As I mentioned above, I didn't want to cover the Harbison in my mind with the Ravel, so I left the auditorium after the Harbison symphony. But I went back after intermission and listened to the Mahler. It was a fine performance, IMO, with nothing that struck me as particularly noteworthy or different. I did notice some "faulty intonations," as I think they call it, from the horns, but they were loudly cheered, along with each of the sections when the conductor recognized them at the end. There was a standing ovation, which only lasted for two curtain calls! Adequately played, Mahler's First is definitely worth hearing, so I'd say this performance is worth listening to.

BSO — 2011/11/17-22 — Info and Reviews

2011-11-18T14:46:00.001-05:00

From the BSO website:

French conductor Ludovic Morlot leads two colorful programs this season. His first features BSO principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe reprising her 2010 American premiere performances of Elliott Carter's Flute Concerto, a work co-commissioned by the BSO. Another esteemed soloist, the American pianist Richard Goode, plays Mozart's late Piano Concerto No. 25. Berlioz's rollicking Roman Carnival Overture is based on music from the composer's opera Benvenuto Cellini. Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin Suite, a truncated version of the full ballet score, is an astonishing feat of musical storytelling and brilliant orchestration.

The page also has links to information about the music — program notes and audio.

I enjoyed the first half — Berlioz and Mozart — more than the second, but there were some pleasant surprises after intermission. The Carter piece seemed to have some fragments of themes (repeated rising sequences of notes) although there was too much percussion and not enough music from the rest of the orchestra — or else the percussion distracted from anything else. The Bartók was interesting, with its woodwind solos and its powerful tutti. The Globe reviewer liked it even more than I did.

As usual you can listen on "Classical New England" on Saturday evening ("pre-game show" at 7:00, concert at 8:00) with rebroadcast at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, and on demand thereafter. Enjoy!

BSO — 2011/11/10-12 — Info and Reviews

2011-11-12T18:06:00.004-05:00

I've already heard this week's program, which is being played again this evening and broadcast/streamed live and retransmitted tomorrow afternoon. Worth hearing, IMO. But first, here's what they have to say about it themselves. (BTW, the BSO website will be offline from this evening until about 4:00 Monday afternoon, as they revamp it.)

Weber, Barber and Tchaikovsky

Boston Symphony Orchestra
November 12, 2011 8:00 PM
Symphony Hall
Boston, Massachusetts

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Featured Artists

Myung-Whun Chung
conductor

Garrick Ohlsson
piano
Program Notes Audio
WEBEROverture to Der Freischütz
BARBERPiano Concerto
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6, Pathétique
Download the full Program Notes
Listen to the Podcasts for this series!

About the Music

Korean-born conductor Myung-Whun Chung, music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and principal conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic, returns to the BSO podium for the first time since 1996. He is joined by the estimable American pianist Garrick Ohlsson for Samuel Barber’s robust Piano Concerto. The overture to the proto-Romantic German composer Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz opens the program with dramatic power. Tchaikovsky’s masterful Symphony No. 6 is full of intensely beautiful music, ending with a slow, deeply dramatic, and emotionally poignant finale.

The Globe review may not quite be "scathing," but the reviewer was definitely dissatisfied.http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2011/11/11/chung-keeps-bso-edge/bhHxKAe0hQryiVnY5IHbmL/story.html
As for me, in the first place I was very pleased to have the Weber piece played at all, so I gave a hearty "Bravo" at the end. The piano concerto was okay. But overall, the pieces I'm familiar with weren't as gripping as other performances I've heard, whether live or on record. They played the notes, and the conductor got some almost inaudible pianissimos from the orchestra, which is all to the good, but there wasn't quite enough menace or joyful surge in the "Freischütz" overture; and in the Tchaikovsky, the march wasn't stirring, and the finale somehow petered out rather than dying away.

But I'll still listen on the radio. I want to hear the Weber about as often as I can, and I'd like another shot at the Barber. Perhaps tonight's performance will be a notch or two above Thursday's. You can all listen at 995allclassical.org

BSO — 2011/11/03-05 — Reviews

2011-11-05T01:21:00.000-04:00

… As for the Haydn and Wagner program, I have a ticket for Thursday and expect to be there. It should be good.

It was very good. The two Haydn symphonies were elegantly played, and it was interesting to hear the development from No. 1 represented by No. 100. But to me at least, it sounded like the same composer, composing on a broader scale. Would I have thought so if I hadn't known already? And the Wagner was powerful. Unfortunately I made the mistake of reading the words in my program booklet while the chorus and James Morris were singing. I wish I had just basked in the glorious music and saved the reading for when I'd listen to the rebroadcast of Saturday's performance.

I strongly recommend listening in to the webstream Saturday evening, Boston time and the repeat Sunday afternoon. http://www.wgbh.org/995/ Click on Listen to Live Stream at 8:00 p.m. Saturday and 1:00 p.m. Sunday (Eastern Time). After that you can listen to it "on demand."

BTW, the Boston Globe's reviewer was less than thrilled —http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2011/11/....6uO/story. html — but he's paid to find fault. The audience was very enthusiastic.

BSO — 2011/10/27-11/01; 2011/11/03-05

2011-10-28T14:38:00.005-04:00

I'm posting about two weeks' programs because the BSO website has the same page for both. My guess is they are doing it because both have the same conductor, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.

Schumann, Strauss, Haydn and Wagner

Schumann and Strauss
October 27- 29 & November 1
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, conductor
Gidon Kremer, violin
SCHUMANN Violin Concerto
STRAUSS Ein Heldenleben

The internationally admired Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer joins Spanish conductor and frequent BSO guest Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos in the first of the conductor’s two BSO programs this season. Kremer plays the relatively rarely heard Violin Concerto of Robert Schumann, a melodically driven, quintessentially Romantic piece written in Schumann’s last productive year of 1853 for Joseph Joachim, the outstanding violinist of the age, who unfortunately never performed it. Richard Strauss’s tone-poem Ein Heldenleben (“A Heroic Life”) is a romp through the composer’s own personal musical landscape—a multi-faceted tour-de-force culmination of his phenomenal tone poems of the 1890s.Podcasts for this series Include:
Video Podcast: A Conversation with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos
Audio Concert Preview by Marc Mandel, narrated by Eleanor McGourty.
Haydn and Wagner
November 3-5
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, conductor
James Morris, bass-baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver, Conductor
HAYDN Symphony No. 1
HAYDN Symphony No. 100,Military
WAGNER Excerpts from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos opens his second BSO program of the season with the rarely heard Haydn symphony designated as “No. 1,” written about 1757. This ten-minute, three-movement work comes very early in the history of the symphony genre. By contrast, Haydn’s Military Symphony dates from the zenith of the Classical symphony. Extended excerpts from Wagner’s humane masterpiece Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg— with bass-baritone James Morris in the role of Hans Sachs, and also featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus—make up the second half of the program.Podcasts for this series Include:
Video Podcast: A Conversation with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos

The Globe review of this week's Schumann and Strauss was generally favorable, but with some criticism both of the concerto itself and of the performances.

Although this concert was part of my subscription, I exchanged the ticket because I had a party to go to. Instead, I'll be attending the January 13 matinee presentation of Weber's Overture to Euryanthe, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.1, the Symphony No. 6 by John Harbison, and "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" by Strauss. This will be my second time hearing the program, since I already had a ticket for the 12th, when the Harbison symphony will receive it's world premiere performance. The principal reason for going a second time is to give the Harbison a second hearing. The BSO performed his first three symphonies last season and I found them worth hearing. This season, they'll be playing the 4th and 5th in November and December, respectively, and they commissioned the 6th.

I'll be listening to Classical New England — as WCRB now calls itself since they've bought a couple of other stations — as usual, for the live broadcast/webcast on Saturday and the repeat Sunday at 1:00.

As for the Haydn and Wagner program, I have a ticket for Thursday and expect to be there. It should be good.

A Mass Audience for Classical Music — contra "The Rest Is Noise"

2011-10-25T16:44:00.000-04:00

I've been reading The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, by Alex Ross. It's a wonderful book, and if you're not already familiar with it, I highly recommend it. It sets the composers of the century in their historical and cultural context and is very readable. To me, 20th Century classical music had seemed to be pretty much of a piece — lots of cacophony with occasional listenable pieces added to the mix. Ross manages to distinguish the cacophonies of Stravinsky from those of Schoenberg in a way that makes sense, and he points out a lot of euphonious music from composers who didn't mind writing things that people would enjoy. That sentence is colored by my personal opinions. Ross has helped me to understand what lies behind much of the music I've only recently begun to find tolerable.

But recently I've found something that I consider questionable. In a Chapter titled "Music for All: Music in FDR's America," Ross begins by noting that radio and records made classical music widely available, well beyond the concert hall, and WPA projects brough live performances to small towns all across the country. He notes that listeners numbered "up to ten million for Arturo Toscanini's broadcasts with the NBC Symphony, and millions more for the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts." He says that "Americans of the period [roughly the 1930's, I think] avidly sought the cultural improvement that classical music was supposed to provide."

But, says Ross, "The trouble was that Toscanini could not make classical music American." The repertoire was almost entirely European composers of the past. Although Stokowski and Koussevitsky championed contemporary works in their concerts, "radio executives and corporate heads who bought advertising" were unwilling to broadcast it. "Yet the failure to support the new led inexorably to the decline of classical music as a popular pastime, for nothing bound it to contemporary life. A venerable art form was set to become one more fad in a ravenous consumer culture."

I think he's got it wrong. I think the audience that was there for Toscanini and the Met in the 1930's is still there for the music they performed. It was there in the 1950's when I was a boy and Bell Telephone and Firestone sponsored half-hour TV programs. The music of Handel and Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn has always been accessible to a mass audience. But many people who gladly listen to these composers, or to the sextet from "Lucia di Lamermoor," will not keep listening long to Roger Sessions or Milton Babbitt. It was not the lack of contemporary music that caused the audiences to melt away; it was an overabundance of it, in my opinion.

Haydn — "The Creation"

2011-10-25T00:16:00.000-04:00

Actually, it was "Die Schöpfung," since they performed it in German.

In this case "they" are Boston Baroque, and I attended their performance on Friday evening, October 21. The review in the Boston Globe praised conductor Martin Pearlman and the soloists and orchestra, and only faulted the chorus for unclear "diction." It's a piece with many excellent moments. I'm somewhat familiar with it from recordings, and it was good to hear it done in a very good live performance.

The decision to go was very much last-minute. I had only started to think about it on Thursday, and bough the tickets by phone on Friday afternoon. My arrival was also last-minute, as I was a bit late leaving home, and my subway connections got me to Jordan Hall at almost 8:10. The orchestra was tuning as I entered the auditorium. I had been afraid I'd miss the overture, but fortunately Maestro Pearlman had decided to wait for me. LOL

They are also recording the oratorio. I've stopped buying recordings, but if you like Haydn, I expect the recording to be worth buying.

BSO — 2011/10/20-22

2011-10-22T15:24:00.001-04:00

As usual, we start with the BSO website description.

All-Brahms Program

October 20-22, Kurt Masur Leads the Orchestra in an all-Brahms Program including the Piano Concerto No. 2 with Yefim Bronfman as Soloist.
We regret to share that Yefim Bronfman has been advised by his doctors to take one week to rest and recuperate from an injury to one of his fingers, and will not be able to perform Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2 in the Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts of October 20, 21, and 22. Nicholas Angelich has graciously agreed to join us as soloist for these performances on short notice, making his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut.
Audio Concert Preview by Robert Kirzinger, narrated by Eleanor McGourty.

Brian Bell with Michael Steinberg
In 1996, the BSO performed the Brahms Third Symphony. At the very same time, author Michael Steinberg was in town promoting his new book, The Symphony: A Listener's Guide. WGBH's Brian Bell took this as a sign. The result? This 18-minute conversation between Bell and Steinberg about Brahms's Third.
Revered German conductor Kurt Masur returns to the BSO podium for the first of two programs with the orchestra this season. (He leads Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the BSO in February.) In this all-Brahms program, he is joined by Nicholas Angelich for Brahms's by turns lyrical and majestic Piano Concerto No. 2, written more than twenty-five years after the First. Brahms's Symphony No. 3, the third and most classically contained of his four works in the genre, is as different from the other three as they are from each other, while at the same time matching the Piano Concerto No. 2 in its expressive intensity.

Brahms isn't my favorite composer, so I exchanged my ticket to this week's concert for November 10, when they'll play works of Weber, Barber, and Tchaikovsky. (I've been saying that they should do some Weber from time to time. Somebody must have heard me. LOL)

But the Globe liked it, and someone who was there said it was wonderful. So I'll listen on the radio tonight and again tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. You can catch the webstreams, as usual.

Enjoy!

I Liked It and So Did The Globe

2011-10-15T16:52:00.000-04:00

I was at the concert on Thursday, October 13 — the one that will be broadcast/streamed live this evening (Saturday) and retransmitted Sunday afternoon. Here's the review from the Boston Globe.

Maybe the reviewer is right about the freshness of Yo-Yo Ma's interpretation of the cello concerto. I'm not familiar enough with the piece to say. What I can say is that he seemed to be really working at it, and I enjoyed it more than I had expected to. As for "The Wooden Prince," it was okay — not as jagged as a lot of Bartók. But I was ready for it to be over about 15 minutes before it stopped.

Overall, I recommend listening if you have a chance.

BSO — 2011/10/13-18

2011-10-11T20:42:00.000-04:00

As usual, we begin with an excerpt from the BSO's website describing this weeks program.

Dvořák and Bartók

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$30.00 - $110.00
Related performances in this program
October 13, 2011 8:00 PM
October 14, 2011 1:30 PM
October 15, 2011 8:00 PM
October 18, 2011 8:00 PM
Boston Symphony Orchestra
October 13, 2011 8:00 PM
Symphony Hall
Boston, Massachusetts
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There is a $6.25 per-ticket service fee for this event.
Featured Artists

Juanjo Mena
conductor

Yo-Yo Ma
cello
Program Notes Audio
DVOŘÁKCello Concerto
BARTÓKThe Wooden Prince
Audio Concert Preview by Marc Mancel, narrated by Eleanor McGourty.
About the Music

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, masterful in any repertoire, performs the powerful Cello Concerto by Antonín Dvořák, a piece the Czech composer began during his sojourn in the United States in the mid-1890s. Making his subscription series debut leading Ma and the orchestra in this program is Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena, who led works of Berg, Strauss, and Mahler in his BSO debut at Tanglewood in July 2010. He also conducts a rarity, Bartók’s score to the folk-tale ballet The Wooden Prince, one of the composer’s three great, orchestrally thrilling stage works from the 1910s.

I have tickets for the Thursday performance, and I'll probably listen on Saturday until my brother calls. Obviously, we can expect Yo-Yo Ma to do very well with the Dvořák concerto. Dvořák isn't one of my favorite composers, but he's okay. Bartók is even less of a favorite, but I don't think I've ever heard "The Wooden Prince," so it should at least be interesting as a new experience. The conductor is also unknown to me, but from what the BSO blurb says, at least he has familiarity with the era from which the pieces come.

The usual information applies with respect to concert time and pre-concert show.

There is a new development, however, with respect to availability. Not only is WCRB rebroadcasting and streaming the Saturday concert on Sunday afternoon, they're also making it available "on demand" through their website for some time (they say two weeks minimum) after the Sunday rebroadcast. The website isn't the easiest I've ever seen to navigate, but I managed to find last week's concert "on demand" and I'm sure you can too. (That reminds me, I should probably post about that concert, to encourage you to listen.)

BSO — 2011/10/06 & 08; Apology; News about WCRB

2011-10-03T13:14:00.001-04:00

First the apology. I'm not sure it was entirely my fault, but I didn't realize that last Saturday's concert would not be broadcast live. If you were listening, they actually apologized to any who had expected the BSO live concert, so maybe they felt they had not been clear enough about their plans. I hope any of you who tuned in were not too badly disappointed. If the Globe reviews of the concerts are to be believed, you didn't miss too much. This is the review of Friday evening, and this is about Saturday. I was there on Friday, and I enjoyed it a lot — good music, well played, I thought, but nothing startling, no new insights or revelations, nothing really exciting. But you can make you own judgments, because they also said that they would broadcast (and stream, I suppose) the concertos Ms. Mutter played not only on Saturday but also on Friday which they consider broadcast-worthy. This will be on Saturday, October 8 — an evening when there will be no live BSO concert.

Now for this week's concert broadcast/streaming schedule, as I understand it. Here's what the BSO website says about this week's program.

Britten, Prokofiev and Sibelius
October 6-11
Sean Newhouse , one of the BSO’s assistant conductors, takes the helm October 6-11 for a program exploring diverse 20th-century repertoire from England, Russia, and Finland. The concerts open with Benjamin Britten’s vivid and dramatic Four Sea Interludes, a series of orchestral entr’actes from the composer’s operatic masterpiece Peter Grimes. French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzetthen joins the BSO for Prokofiev’s inventive Piano Concerto No. 3, a whirlwind for soloist and orchestra that is by turns lyrical and energetically dissonant. Closing the program is Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2, one of his most popular and immediately captivating works.

But as I mentioned earlier, there is no Saturday concert this week. (Possibly this has something to do with the fact that it is Yom Kippur.) So instead, they will broadcast the performance on Thursday, October 6, which just happens to be the 50th anniversary of the first regular broadcast of the BSO over WGBH, which now owns WCRB. So if you want to hear it, you will need to listen then. Further info about the music is available through this page of the BSO website.

Finally, here is an article about WCRB and its plans, not just for the Boston Symphony concerts but for the rest of their programming. It looks as if you'll have some good opportunities to listen not only to the BSO but to lots of other good performances of various types.

BSO — 2011/10/02

2011-09-30T14:06:00.003-04:00

As usual, we begin with what the BSO website says about the concert which will be broadcast and streamed live on Saturday evening on WCRB and other stationsand rebroadcast and streamed on Sunday afternoon at 1:00* on WCRB.

All-Mozart Program

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$32.00 - $120.00
Related performances in this program
October 1, 2011 8:00 PM
Boston Symphony Orchestra
October 1, 2011 8:00 PM
Symphony Hall
Boston, Massachusetts

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There is a $6.25 per-ticket service fee for this event.
Featured Artists

Anne-Sophie Mutter
violin and conductor
Program Notes Audio
MOZARTViolin Concerto No. 2 in D, K.211
MOZARTViolin Concerto No. 1 in B-flat, K.207
MOZARTViolin Concerto No. 4 in D, K.218
Download the full Program Notes
Podcasts for this series Include:

Audio Concert Preview by Marc Mandel, narrated by Eleanor McGourty.

About the Music

After playing and conducting the Third and Fifth of Mozart’s five violin concertos on Opening Night, Anne-Sophie Mutter completes the with Mozart’s violin concertos 1, 2, and 4. Written in Salzburg between 1773 and 1775, the five concertos together show the composer’s increasing confidence in his own compositional personality. The elegant Violin Concerto No. 1, written when Mozart was seventeen, is already a gem; but one marvels at the increasing wealth of personality the composer brought, two years later, to the Second through Fifth concertos.

Times are Boston local time, and there will be the usual pre-concert features at 7:00 on Saturday.

If you click on the link I gave above, there will be links for notes about the music. Mozart may seem pretty basic, and I'm sure it will all be easy to follow, but sometimes the notes can point out something "below the surface" that we don't notice as we float cheerfully on the surface of beautiful music.

As the website mentions, the Saturday concert is the second of two in which Anne-Sophie Mutter is both soloist and conductor. The first is this evening, Friday, which is opening night for the BSO's season. I decided to get a ticket and go to it. It will be my first Opening Night, at the Boston Symphony. There was an interesting article about Anne-Sophie Mutter's role in the concerts in today's Boston Globe.
I think its very informative — well worth reading.

*Please note that when I mentioned these rebroadcasts in my previous post, I gave the wrong time. They are at 1:00 p.m., Boston time, not 3:00 as I had mistakenly thought. I have also corrected my earlier post to show the correct time.

Concert Season Begins; Good News for Europe

2011-09-26T13:10:00.001-04:00

Concert Season Begins. On Saturday the sailing season ended for me as I helped run the last Saturday races for 2011. On Sunday the concert season began for me as I attended my first Handel and Haydn Society concert of their 2011-2012 season. They had actually given the concert on Friday as well, and here's a link to the review in Saturday's Boston Globe. Unfortunately, I tend to doze more at matinee concerts than at evening ones. Still, I heard enough to say that I liked the performances, that I didn't think the sound of the fortepiano was lost — at least where I was sitting in the second balcony center — and I found the Mozart symphony really striking, especially the second movement, which struck me as a little bit faster than I expected. In a Q&A session with audience member after the concert, Christophers and Bezuidenhout explained that the somewhat faster tempo seems to correspond more nearly to the 18th Century style than the slower tempo which is common today. One source is the metronome markings which Czerny and Hummel placed in the piano four hands arrangements which each made of the symphony.

I had thought that this was the quickest turnaround ever for me between sailing and concert seasons, but I see from my archive that last year I went to a concert even before the sailing season was over. But it was a special event, not part of a subscription.

I may go to the BSO opening night concert this Friday. They are offering a $50 discount, which brings it close to the price I pay for my Thursday evening subscription concerts.

Good News for Europe. WCRB has announced that they will rebroadcast the Saturday evening Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts at 1:00 p.m. on Sundays (which would be 6:00 p.m. in Great Britain and 7:00 in Germany — a more convenient time for most Europeans that 2 or 3 in the morning, I suppose).

Note: Edited to correct time of rebroadcasts of BSO concerts. Correct times are now in bold face above.

Tanglewood — 2011/08/26-28 — Season Finale

2011-08-26T15:57:00.000-04:00

The BSO website informs us:

Final Weekend of BSO Concerts at Tanglewood!

Gerswhin's Porgy and Bess
Friday, August 26, 8:30PM

The BSO begins its final weekend of the 2011 Tanglewood season Friday, August 26, with its first-ever performance of George Gershwin’s great American masterpiece, the blues-and-jazz-inflected Porgy and Bess, which examines African-American life in the South during the 1920s. Described by the composer as an “American folk opera,” Porgy and Bess premiered on Broadway in 1935. Three-quarters of a century later, the work has assumed its rightful place among the greatest of America’s music, and its songs are sung all over the world.
All-Beethoven Program
Saturday, August 27, 8:30PM

The great Itzhak Perlman joins the orchestra August 27 for an all-Beethoven program that demonstrates his talents as both violinist and conductor. Mr. Perlman will act as soloist and leader for the Romances Nos. 1 and 2 for violin and orchestra, two relatively brief early-period works (written 1798–1802) that possess an understated elegance and foreshadow Beethoven’s great Violin Concerto, which would follow a few years later. Mr. Perlman then trades his fiddle for a baton and conducts the composer’s First and Fifth symphonies.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
Sunday, August 28, 2:30PM

On August 28, the Boston Symphony Orchestra brings its portion of the 2011 Tanglewood season to a close with the traditional season-ending performance of Beethoven’s transcendent Symphony No. 9. Eminent maestro Lorin Maazel presides over this year’s final evening and is joined by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, soprano Joyce El-Khoury (BSO and Tanglewood debut), mezzo-soprano Margaret Gawrysiak (BSO and Tanglewood debut), tenor Garrett Sorenson, and bass-baritone Eric Owens (Tanglewood debut). The all-encompassing Ninth Symphony is not only one of the greatest and most well-known works ever, but also is a rare example of music that leaves behind the time in which it was written and heralds the arrival of a new era.

Further info is available both on the website of WCRB (which streams the concerts, with pre-concert coverage beginning 1 1/2 hours before each concert) and on the BSO's own website. Here's a link to the WCRB page which includes interviews with performers scheduled for Friday and Saturday evenings and with BSO General Manager Mark Volpe. The BSO's page for Friday evening lists cast and conductor. The Saturday page has links to notes and audio for the symphonies, and the page for the Sunday concert lists soloists, conductor and chorus, with links to notes and audio. The BSO pages also give info about broadcasts on other stations as well as WCRB, so if you're in range for any of the broadcast stations you can listen there, as well.

"But just a minute," you say, "what about the hurricane which is expected to be around?" Well, a little while ago the announcers on WCRB said that as of then, all systems were "go" for all three concerts as far as the BSO was concerned. They pointed out that never in the 74 years of concerts at Tanglewood has a concert been cancelled because of weather.

Tanglewood — 2011/08/19-21 — Boston Pops on Saturday

2011-08-19T11:41:00.003-04:00

Once more, the BSO website gives us the basics for this weekend.

Schoenberg, Schumann and Beethoven

Friday, August 19, 8:30PM

Conductor Christoph von Dohnányi returns to the BSO podium on August 19 for his second program of the 2011 Tanglewood season, leading the BSO in Beethoven’s revolutionary Symphony No. 3, Eroica, a piece that never seems to age no matter how much it is performed, and Schumann’s powerful yet lyrical Piano Concerto, the only work in the genre the composer completed despite a number of other attempts, with pianistMartin Helmchen in his BSO and Tanglewood debuts as soloist. Opening the program is Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, a fascinating and eloquent early work for chamber orchestra that distills the traditional symphonic form into a single concise movement.

Film Night at Tanglewood
Saturday, August 20, 8:30PM

One of the season's most enduring and popular traditions, the annualFilm Night at Tanglewood concert August 20 celebrates the music of the movies. This summer, John Williams and the Boston Pops are joined by frequent collaborator Gil Shaham in a program featuring film music arranged for violin and orchestra, including Gardel’s Por Una Cabeza (Tango from Scent of a Woman), three pieces from Schindler’s List, and excerpts from Fiddler on the Roof. Also on the program will be Mr. Williams’s nostalgic evocation of early 20th-century America from the 1969 The Reivers, based on the book of the same name by William Faulkner, with special guest Morgan Freeman as narrator. Along with The Reivers, Williams will lead the orchestra in a salute to the Hollywood Western, including John Dunbar’s Theme from Dances with Wolves, the theme from How the West Was Won, and Williams’s own The Cowboys Overture.

All-Mozart Program
Sunday, August 21, 2:30PM

Bernard Labadie, renowned Music Director of the Canadian Baroque and Classical specialist orchestra Les Violons du Roy, makes his Tanglewood debut August 21 as he brings his expertise to the BSO in an all-Mozart program. Opening the concert is the Chaconne from the early opera seria Idomeneo, the composer’s first mature opera. Pianist Benedetto Lupo makes his BSO and Tanglewood debuts as soloist for the Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat, K. 456, and the program concludes with the Symphony No. 41, Jupiter, Mozart’s final symphony and one of history’s greatest works in the genre.

And, as always, you can get the concerts and WCRB's pre-concert features beginning 1 1/2 hours before the scheduled start of each concert via their webstream.

There is also online info available about these concerts both at the WCRB link above and at additional pages of the BSO website for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Tanglewood — 2011/08/12-14

2011-08-12T14:23:00.002-04:00

The BSO website says it best:

Bizet, Rodrigo, Boccherini/Berio, Falla, Granados and Giménez
Friday, August 12, 8:30PM

Maestro Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos returns for the second week in a row to lead the BSO in an August 12 program dedicated to Spanish and Spanish-inspired music, repertoire championed by Mr. Frühbeck throughout his career. World-renowned guitar virtuoso and fellow Spaniard Pepe Romero makes his Tanglewood debut in this concert, highlights of which include Preludes from Bizet’s Seville-set opera Carmen; Rodrigo’sConcierto de Aranjuez, surely the best-known work for guitar and orchestra; and the Interlude and First Dance from Falla’s La vida breve (Life is Short), an opera about the doomed love of a gypsy woman for an upper-class man.

Prokofiev, Schumann and Brahms
Saturday, August 13, 8:30PM

Two of classical music’s most decorated artists join the BSO August 13 as the inimitable cellist Yo-Yo Ma performs as soloist and German-Hungarian conductor Christoph von Dohnányi leads the orchestra. Opening the program is Prokofiev’s effervescent Symphony No. 1, Classical. Mr. Ma takes the lead in Schumann’s free-flowing and adventurous Cello Concerto, and the evening concludes with Brahms’s monumental Symphony No. 1, with which the composer finally took up the imposing symphonic mantel [sic] of Beethoven.

Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra: All-Brahms
Sunday, August 14, 2:30PM

On Sunday afternoon, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra pays homage to Brahms with a concert dedicated entirely to his music, including Nänie, a work for chorus and orchestra that sets a poem by Schiller contemplating mortality; Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), something of a miniature counterpart to the German Requiem; the Alto Rhapsody¸ a piece for mezzo-soprano, male chorus, and orchestra written as a wedding gift for Schumann’s daughter; and the great Symphony No. 2. The young orchestra is conducted by Mr. Frühbeck and joined by mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Careful readers will have noted that although the heading for Friday evening promises "Bizet, Rodrigo, Boccherini/Berio, Falla, Granados and Giménez ", the body says nothing about Boccherini/Berio, Granados, or Giménez. But elsewhere, the website promises us "BOCCHERINI/BERIO Ritirata notturna di Madrid" before the Falla and "GRANADOS Intermezzo from Goyescas" and "GIMÉNEZ Intermezzo from La boda de Luís Alonso" afterwards. (Maybe the BSO website doesn't say it best, after all.) This website page with complete listings in turn has links to notes on all the works, and audio for all but Bizet and Granados.

Other pages offer links for notes and audio for the Saturday and Sunday concerts.

Go to WCRB for the stream, including pre-concert features, if you don't have a broadcast provider where you live.

Tanglewood — 2011/08/05-07

2011-08-05T17:18:00.000-04:00

Here's how the BSO website describe's this weekend's offerings at Tanglewood.

Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Strauss

Friday, August 5, 8:30PM

Spanish conductor and longtime, beloved Tanglewood guest Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos takes the podium on August 5 for a BSO program featuring the young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang, who makes her Tanglewood debut in Rachmaninoff’s perennial audience favorite Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a virtuosic set of 24 variations for piano and orchestra on the final and most famous of Paganini’s 24 dazzling caprices for solo violin. Also on the program are Beethoven’s boisterous Symphony No. 8—which the composer considered superior to the more popular and more “serious” Symphony No. 7—and a suite from Richard Strauss’s opulent and romantic operatic comedy Der Rosenkavalier, which tells a traditional theatrical tale of impulsive young love pitted against a previously arranged marriage.
Jalbert, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff
Saturday, August 6, 8:30PM

On August 6, renowned violinist Sarah Chang joins the BSO for Mendelssohn’s sparkling Violin Concerto, the composer’s last full-scale orchestral work and a staple of the repertoire. Completed in 1845, the concerto is familiar and traditional to modern ears, but its solo-violin opening and three movements that all flow together without pause were very unusual for their time. The program also includes Rachmaninoff’s sweeping Symphony No. 2 and American composer Pierre Jalbert’s sparklingly orchestrated Music of air and fire, which premiered in California in 2007. Sean Newhouse, one of the BSO’s Assistant Conductors, will lead the orchestra for the first time at Tanglewood.
Smetana, Mozart and Tchaikovsky
Sunday, August 7, 2:30PM

The BSO’s weekend comes to a close August 7 with one of the world’s foremost concert pianists, Emanuel Ax, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat, K.482, written in Vienna in 1785 when the young composer was writing many new concertos for performances featuring himself as soloist. Lionel Bringuier, an Assistant Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra who makes his BSO and Tanglewood debuts in this program, also will conduct Tchaikovsky’s iconic Symphony No. 5 and Smetana’s The Moldau, a musical portrait of a river from the composer’s iconic work of musical nationalism, Má Vlast.

As always, you can listen via WCRB's webstream, with pre-concert interviews comments and related music beginning 1 1/2 hours before the scheduled concert.

Bonus Post — Videos

2011-07-31T01:59:00.002-04:00

While I was having dinner this evening, I thought of some of the music from the finale of "Der Freischutz." But first, here's the Hunters' Chorus which comes a little earlier.

This is a performance conducted by one of the greatest conductors of the first half of the twentieth century, Wilhelm Furtwängler, at the Salzburg Festival, on July 26, 1954, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the chorus of the Vienna State Opera.

An English translation:

CHORUS OF HUNTSMEN
What pleasure on earth can compare with the hunter's?
Whose cup of life sparkles so richly?
To lie in the verdure while the horns sound,
To follow the stag through thicket and pond,
Is joy for a prince, is a real man's desire,
Is strengthens your limbs and spices your food.
When woods and rocks resound all about us,
A full goblet sings a freer and happier song!
Yo ho! Tralala!

Diana is present to brighten the night;
Her darkness cools us like any refreshment in the day.
To fell the bloody wolf, and the boar
who greedily roots through the green crops,
Is joy for a prince, is real man's desire,
It strengthens your limbs and spices your food.
When woods and rocks resound all about us,
A full goblet sings a freer and happier song!
Yo, ho! Trala!

And here's the original:
Jägernchor
Was gleicht wohl auf Erden dem Jägervergnügen?
Wem sprudelt der Becher des Lebens so reich?
Beim Klange der Hörner im Grünen zu liegen,
Den Hirsch zu verfolgen durch Dickicht und Teich,
Ist fürstliche Freude, ist männlich Verlangen,
Erstarket die Glieder und würzet das Mahl.
Wenn Wälder und Felsen uns hallend umfangen,
Tönt freier und freud'ger der volle Pokal!
Jo, ho! Tralalalala!

Diana ist kundig, die Nacht zu erhellen,
Wie labend am Tage ihr Dunkel uns kühlt.
Den blutigen Wolf und den Eber zu fällen,
Der gierig die grünenden Saaten durchwühlt,
Ist fürstliche Freude, ist männlich Verlangen,
Erstarket die Glieder und würzet das Mahl.
Wenn Wälder und Felsen uns hallend umfangen,
Tönt freier und freud'ger der volle Pokal!
Jo, ho! Tralalalala!

Here's the finale of the opera, including the bit I was thinking of.

The actual theme begins at 5:44, with Max's words.

The words:
KUNO
He was always been faithful to duty!

AGATHA
O do not tear him from my arms!

HUNTSMEN
He is so brave, full of strength and courage!

PEASANTS
O he was always faithful and good.

ANNCHEN
Gracious Sir, o have pity!

CHORUS and KUNO
Gracious Sir, o have pity!

ANNCHEN
O have pity!

OTTOKAR
No, no, no!
Agatha is too pure for him!
to Max
Away, out of my sight!
Prison awaits you if you ever come back!

THE HERMIT
comes forward. Everyone stands reverently back and greets him humbly; even the Prince bares his head.

HERMIT
Who lays so strict a sentence upon him?
An error, is it worthy of such atonement?

OTTOKAR
Is it you, holy man,
Whom the district honours far and wide?
My greetings, blessed among men!
I too obey you gladly.
Pronounce his verdict yourself; your will
I will faithfully fulfil.

HERMIT
Even the pious heart can easily swerve
And step away from right and duty,
When love and fear of rightousness' limits
Despair breaks all bounds.
Is it right that on a bullet's course
Two noble hearts' happiness depends?
And if they succumb to the toils
In. which passion entwines them,
Who is to raise the first stone?
Who does not look into his own heart?
So let the trial shot no more take place!
with a reproachful glance at Max
He, Sir,
Who has grieviously sinned,
But was ever yet pure and trusty,
Let him serve a year's probation for it!
And if he remains as I have ever found him,
Then let Agatha's hand be his!

OTTOKAR
Your word is enough for me;
A loftier One speaks from within you.

ALL
Hail to our Prince, he does not oppose
What the pious recluse says.

OTTOKAR
to Max
If you prove yourself worthy, as the old man found you,
Then I myself will plight your troth.

MAX
My heart shall think of the future,
May right and duty ever be holy to me!

AGATHA
to Ottokar
O read my thanks in these tears;
Weak words are not enough for them!

OTTOKAR and HERMIT
The One above the stars is full of mercy,
Therefore it honours princes to give pardon.

KUNO
to Max and Agatha
Never stray from the paths of rightousness
If you'd be worthy of your happiness.

ANNCHEN
to Agatha
O, beloved friend, then I will adorn
You once more for the wedding altar.

HERMIT
And now uplift your gaze
To Him who was the protector of innocence!

He kneels down and raises his hands.
Agatha, Kuno, Max, Annchen and several of the folk follow his example.

ALL
Yes, let us lift our gaze to Heaven,
And rely firmly on the ruling of the Eternal!

AGATHA, ANNCHEN, MAX, OTTOKAR, KUNO and HERMIT
Whoever is pure of heart and guiltless of life
May, childlike, trust in the gentleness of the Father!

ALL
Yes, let us lift our gaze
And rely firmly on the Eternal's ruling,
Trust firmly in the Father's gentleness!
Whoever is pure of heart and guiltless of life
May, childlike, trust in the gentleness of the Father.

In the original:

Kuno
Er war sonst stets getreu der Pflicht!
Agathe
O reißt ihn nicht aus meinen Armen!
Jägern
Er ist so brav, voll Kraft und Mut!
Bauern
O er war immer treu und gut.
Ännchen
Gnädigen Herr' o habt Erbarmen!
Ottokar
Nein, nein, nein!
Agathe ist für ihn zu rein!
Hinweg, hinweg aus meinem Blick!
Dein harrt der Kerker,
kehrst du je zurück!
Heremit
Wer legt auf ihn so strengen Bann?
Ein Fehltritt, ist er solcher Büßung wert?
Ottokar
Bist du es, heil'ger Mann,
Den weit und breit die Gegend ehrt?
Sei mir gegrüßt, Gesegneter des Herrn!
Dir bin auch ich gehorsam gern.
Sprich du sein Urteil; deinen Willen
Will treulich ich erfüllen.
Heremit
Leicht kann des Frommen Herz auch wanken
Und überschreiten Recht und Pflicht,
Wenn Lieb' und Furcht der Tugend Schranken,
Verzweiflung alle Dämme bricht.
Ist's recht, auf einer Kugel Lauf
Zwei edler Herzen Glück zu setzen?
Und unterliegen sie den Netzen,
Womit sie Leidenschaft umflicht,
Wer höb' den ersten Stein wohl auf?
Wer griff' in seinen Busen nicht?
Es finde nie der Probeschuß mehr statt!
Ihm, Herr, der schwer gesündigt hat,
Doch sonst stets rein und bieder war,
Vergönnt dafür ein Probejahr!
Und bleibt er dann, wie ich ihn stets erfand,
Dann werde sein Agathes Hand!
Ottokar
Dein Wort genüget mir.
Ein Hör'rer spricht aus dir.
Alle
Heil userm Herrn, er widerstehet nicht
Dem, was der fromme Klausner spricht!
Ottokar
Bewährst du dich, wie dich der Greis erfand,
Dann knüpf ich selber euer Band!
Max
Die Zukunft soll mein Herz bewähren,
Stets heilig sei mir Recht und Pflicht!
Agathe
O lest den Dank in diesen Zähren,
Das schwache Wort genügt ihm nicht!
Ottokar, Heremit
Der über Sternen ist voll Gnade,
Drum ehrt es Fürsten, zu verzeihn!
Kuno
Weicht nimmer von der Tugend Pfade,
Um eures Glückes wert zu sein!
Ännchen
O dann, geliebte Freundin, schmücke
Ich dich aufs neu zum Traualtar!
Heremit
Doch jetzt erhebt noch eure Blicke
Zu dem, der Schutz der Unschuld war!
Alle
Ja, laßt uns zum Himmel die Blicke erheben
Und test auf die Lenkung des Ewigen baun!
Agathe, Ännchen, Max, Ottokar, Kuno und Heremit
Wer rein ist von Herzen und schuldlos im Leben,
Darf kindlich der Milde des Vaters vertraun!
Alle
Ja, laßt uns die Blicke erheben
Und fest auf die Lenkung des Ewigen baun,
Fest der Milde des Vaters vertraun!
Wer rein ist von Herzen und schuldlos im Leben,
Darf kindlich der Milde des Vaters vertraun!
ENDE

And if you want more. here's the overture, again with Furtwängler and the Viennese at the 1954 Salzburg Festival.

Tanglewood — 2011/07/30-31; 08/02

2011-07-30T18:30:00.000-04:00

Sorry I missed telling about Friday's concert. I hope you remembered on your own, There was a Mozart piano concerto performed by Orion Weiss, substitution for Leon Fliesher.

Here's what the website says about the rest of the weekend.

All-Brahms Program
Saturday, July 30, 8:30PM

On July 30, National Symphony Orchestra Music Director Christoph Eschenbach wields the baton in the first of two performances with the BSO on consecutive days. An all-Brahms program, the July 30 concert features the Symphony No. 4 and soloist Peter Serkin in the Piano Concerto No. 1. A lengthy and weighty work for piano and orchestra, the Concerto No. 1 was originally intended to be Brahms's first symphony, but the young composer—who was in his early 20s at the time—decided he wasn't ready to compose a work in that genre.

Hadyn and Mahler
Sunday, July 31, 2:30PM

On the second night of Maestro Eschenbach's visit to the BSO podium, the program opens with Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1—with the young American cellist Alisa Weilerstein as soloist—and closes with a Boston Symphony performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 1. Now frequently performed, Haydn's delightful early cello concerto was lost from the repertoire until the fortuitous discovery of a manuscript in 1961 in a Prague museum.

Tanglewood On Parade
Tuesday, August 2, 8:30PM

On August 2, Tanglewood on Parade, one of the festival’s most beloved traditions, offers the chance to see all of the festival’s orchestras perform in a single extended concert. Conductors Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Mr. Eschenbach, John Williams, and Stefan Asbury will share the podium for a program that will include Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, and the traditional Tanglewood on Parade finale, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. This lively evening features performances by the BSO, the TMCO, and the Boston Pops and culminates in a dazzling fireworks display over the Stockbridge Bowl. Tanglewood on Parade also features a full day of family-friendly activities including an instrument playground, magic show, face painting, and free tours of the Tanglewood grounds.

I think WCRB will broadcast and stream the Tanglewood on Parade concert on Tuesday.

Tanglewood — 2011/07/22-24

2011-07-22T13:57:00.001-04:00

The BSO website provides the following information.

All-Baroque Program

Friday, July 22, 8:30PM

Young Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado makes his BSO and Tanglewood debuts July 22 as he and the orchestra are joined by renowned mezzo-soprano Susan Graham for an all-Baroque program including vocal excerpts from Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride and arias from Handel's Alcina and Ariodonte. Handel's vocal music forms the heart of the Baroque opera repertoire, and Gluck, writing a generation later, was intent on making opera more natural, more diverse, and more dramatically interesting, as he pioneered reforms to the genre that influenced composers around the world and ushered in a new era of music for the theater. The orchestral works by J. S. Bach and the French composer Jean-Phillippe Rameau, represented on this program by Rameau's Suite from Pygmalion and Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 4, display the era's instrumental music in its highest form.

Stucky, Brahms, and Beethoven
Saturday, July 23, 8:30PM

Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden, currently music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, also makes his BSO and Tanglewood debuts this weekend, conducting Brahms's soaring, ever-popular Violin Concerto; Beethoven's masterful, dance-infused Symphony No. 7; and Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Steven Stucky's Rhapsodies, a series of 12 short and diverse episodes for orchestra. Each of the mesmerizing work's brief sections is begun by the sound of a single instrument playing alone, and that instrument's timbre is then imitated and interpreted by the rest of the orchestra.

All-Ravel Program
Sunday, July 24, 2:30PM

Hot on the heels of his two recitals featuring Ravel's complete music for solo piano on July 20 and 21, outstanding pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet again takes center stage July 24, this time with the BSO and guest conductor Emmanuel Krivine, for another program exclusively featuring music by the French master. Mr. Thibaudet is the soloist for both of Ravel's piano concertos, the jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in G and the Piano Concerto in D for the left hand, which was commissioned by the famous concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein after he lost his right arm in World War I. Also on the program are Valses nobles et sentimentales—which Ravel adapted for orchestra from the original piano version—and the immortal Boléro.

This is certainly a varied weekend. There may be something for everyone, but each listener will probably find something that isn't exactly his or her favorite. I hope you'll find something worth listening to. WCRB begins their coverage 1 1/2 hours before each concert. WCRB is not your only resource. There are other stations which broadcast the concerts, and the BSO has its own media center — all as also indicated on the BSO website.

Radio Broadcasts and Streaming
Concerts from the Shed are broadcast each Friday and Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon in Boston on WCRB 99.5 FM and WGBH's HD2 all classical channel, in Albany on WAMC 90.3 FM and its satellite network, and in Connecticut on WMNR 88.1 FM. In addition, Sunday-afternoon concerts are broadcast on WFCR 88.5 in Amherst. Streaming audio of the broadcasts can also be accessed via the stations' websites atwww.wgbh.org/995; www.wamc.org;www.wmnr.org; and www.wfcr.org.
How to listen-in from the BSO Media Center:
You can listen LIVE to WGBH in our BSO MEDIA CENTER!
Fridays and Saturdays at 7pm and Sundays at 1pm Tanglewood concerts are broadcast LIVE by 99.5 All-Classical, a service of WGBH .

You can also check out the WCRB website for scheduling info and other features.

Tanglewood — 2011/07/15-17

2011-07-15T00:14:00.000-04:00

The BSO website promises us

A Weekend of Dvořák, Schumann and Sibelius at Tanglewood!

Friday, July 15, 8:30PM

German conductor Kurt Masur, a frequent guest of the BSO and at Tanglewood, returns to the Shed July 15 to conduct Dvořák's Cello Concerto, featuring soloist Lynn Harrell, and Schumann’s Symphony No. 1, Spring, which the BSO also performed during the Symphony Hall season in Boston as part of its complete cycle of Schumann symphonies in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Dvořák's ardent, rhapsodic concerto, which combines the composer's distinctive orchestral timbres with decidedly Slavonic melodies, has been one of his most popular and successful works since its 1896 premiere in London. Schumann's First Symphony, inspired his wife Clara and premiered by his good friend Felix Mendelssohn, was written at a torrential pace and was the composer's first significant orchestral work.

All-Sibelius Program
Saturday, July 16, 8:30PM

Chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra John Storgaards makes his BSO and Tanglewood debuts July 16 as he leads the BSO and Danish violinist Nikolaj Znaider in an all-Sibelius program featuring the soaring Violin Concerto, the majestic Symphony No. 5, the beloved tone poem Finlandia, and Valse triste. Though all written over a period of just 6 years, the works catch the composer in three quite different moods. Finlandia is a perfect example of Sibelius's stirring, nationalistic side; Valse triste conjures a feverish, surreal atmosphere reminiscent of Mahler's own disjointed waltzes; and the Violin Concerto packages the composer's soaring melodies into a virtuosic and more traditional form.

Sibelius has become something of a favorite of mine, so I'm especially looking forward to the Saturday concert. I may even ask my brother to postpone his weekly phone call from Tokyo to Sunday evening, Boston Time, so I can hear the whole thing.

And what about Sunday afternoon?

The Boston Pops Pay Tribute to Cole Porter
Sunday, July 17, 2:30PM
On July 17, acclaimed Broadway stars Kelli O'Hara and Jason Danieley join conductor Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Orchestra for a program of Pops orchestral favorites and a tribute to the great Cole Porter, the Indiana-born, classically trained master of musical theater, whose many hit songs include such timeless classics as "It's De-lovely," "You're the Top," "Anything Goes," "So in Love," and "In the Still of the Night." Porter's catchy melodies and urbane lyrics embody the golden age of Broadway musicals and have established him as one of the most beloved and prolific contributors to the American Songbook. Danieley, who has been hailed by the NYTimes as "the most exquisite tenor on Broadway," and the three-time Tony nominated O'Hara recently joined the Boston Pops on tour with this tribute program, garnering rave reviews.

WCRB will begin the pre-concert show 1 1/2 hours before each concert. There is a bit more info along with links to discussions of Schumann and the Sibelius symphony and to a 24 hour BSO Tanglewood channel on the WCRB website.

BSO — Tanglewood — 2011/07/08-10

2011-07-08T19:02:00.003-04:00

The BSO Tanglewood season begins tonight. Here's what their website says.

Opening Night at Tanglewood

Friday, July 8, 8:30PM

On Friday, July 8, at 8:30PM, Charles Dutoit, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, acclaimed vocal soloists, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus join forces to open the BSO’s 2011 Tanglewood season with an extraordinary all-Italian program drawn from the operatic and symphonic repertoire. The concert begins with extended excerpts from Act I of Bellini’s Norma featuring the young American soprano Angela Meade in her BSO debut. The program continues with music of Verdi, Rossini, and concludes with Respighi’s spectacularly virtuosic and colorful Pines of Rome.

Berlioz Requiem

Saturday, July 9, 8:30PM

Saturday night, July 9, Charles Dutoit leads the BSO in Berlioz's Requiem with tenor Russell Thomas as soloist.

Higdon, Bruch and Tchaikovsky

Sunday, July 10, 2:30PM

On July 10, violinist Joshua Bell joins conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya for a program of Higdon, Bruch, and Tchaikovsky, to conclude the BSO's first weekend of the 2011 Tanglewood season.

So tune your computer to WCRB and listen to the stream. The pre-game coverage starts 1 1/2 hours before each concert.

Tanglewood 2011 on WCRB

2011-06-26T21:08:00.000-04:00

WCRB has (finally) announced, "Tanglewood returns for summer weekends on 99.5 All Classical with a full slate of live BSO concerts beginning on July 8" For more about the plans see their website here, and for the program of each broadcast/webcast see here. (You have to scroll down just a bit to get to the "Live From Tanglewood" heading.)

So take a look at what's being presented. Maybe you'll want to try to listen to the whole season, except if you're prevented on occasion; or maybe you'll want to hear a select few concerts. But I hope you'll find something worthwhile to listen to. I'll be listening whenever I'm free.

BSO — 2011/05/05-07

2011-05-07T18:41:00.002-04:00

This evening we get the final BSO concert of this season. Here's some info from the website.

Featured Artists

Charles Dutoit
conductor

Bernarda Fink
mezzo-soprano

Jean-Paul Fouchécourt
tenor

Laurent Naouri
baritone
Ensembles
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor

About the Music

For the final concerts of the 2010-2011 BSO season, Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit leads one of the great works in the French repertoire central to the Boston Symphony legacy, Hector Berlioz’s “dramatic symphony” Roméo et Juliette, based on Shakespeare’s play. Of this work the composer wrote, “it is neither a concert opera nor a cantata, but a symphony with choruses,” reflecting the fact that, despite the presence of voices, Berlioz intended the orchestral music—including movements inspired by the grand ball at the home of the Capulets, where the lovers meet; by Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene, and by Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech—to carry the expressive weight of the drama. One of his most ambitious pieces, Roméo et Juliette was completed in 1839 after years of work, and became one of Berlioz’s greatest successes with the public.

The Globe reviewer liked it, as did I on Thursday evening. And the Boston Musical Intelligencer makes three.

By now I'm sure you know the drill for listening over the web.

Spring Orgy® Period 2011

2011-05-03T00:04:00.000-04:00

WHRB has begun their Spring Orgy® Period with the Warhorse Orgy on Sunday. For readers who haven't read earlier posts about the Orgies, what they call orgies are continuous playing of virtually all the works of a particular composer (or performer). These began way back as an easy way for the students to handle programming during exam periods at Harvard, where the station is located. They would just play all they had of someone's music, and then someone else. It is a little different now. They used to run their orgies around the clock. Now the classical music orgies are suspended between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. And the Winter Orgy® no longer is precisely aligned with the first semester exams. But the basic idea is the same: a chronological run through the entire recorded work of a particular composer or performer.

Orgies this month will include

Richard Strauss — to begin at 1 p.m. on Teusday, May 3 and end at 10 p.m. on May 6
Einojuhani Rautavaara — Sunday, May 8, from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., with a break from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for the service from Harvard's Memorial Church
Pablo Casals — Monday, May 9, 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Ballets Russes — Wednesday, May 11, noon to 10 p.m.
Sir Thomas Beecham — Sunday, May 15, 1 p.m. to Monday, May 12, 10 p.m.
Alan Hovhaness — Thursday, May 19, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Jean-Philippe Rameau — Sunday, May 22, 12:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Again, the Strauss and Beecham orgies will be suspended during the overnight hours from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. So you won't have to stay up all night for them. During other times, including the overnight hours, there will sometimes be orgies of other types of music.

Times are Eastern Daylight Savings (or summer time, as it's known elsewhere).

And WHRB will stream this on the web.

Enjoy.

BSO — 2011/04/28-30; Met — 04/30

2011-04-30T13:50:00.001-04:00

As I write, the Met is broadcasting "Il Trovatore," by Verdi. Give it a listen if you can.

This is the next to last week of BSO concerts for the season. Quoth the website:

The young Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski makes his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut under the baton of frequent guest conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos performing Liszt’s exciting Piano Concerto No. 2, an innovative, sparkling, one-movement work. 2011 marks the bicentennial of Liszt’s birth. Two orchestral showpieces bookend the concerto. The German composer Max Reger (1873-1916) was a transitional figure between the Romantic and the modern eras, but had a strong sense of the Germanic musical tradition. His Variations and Fugue employ a theme from one of Mozart’s most beloved piano sonatas, the A major K.331. Ravel’s familiar but exotic Boléro completes the program.

The Globe liked it, especially Mr. Trpčeski's performance, as did the Boston Musical Intelligencer. I wasn't there on Thursday, so I can't add my own impressions, but it sounds as if it's worth listening to on WCRB.

And, as usual there are resources you can use to preview of follow up, both at the BSO website, and at WCRB.

Enjoy.

BSO — 2011/04/21-23

2011-04-23T12:56:00.001-04:00

As usual, here's info from the BSO website.

Featured Artists

Masaaki Suzuki
conductor

Hana Blažíková
soprano

Ingeborg Danz
mezzo-soprano

Christoph Prégardien
tenor (Evangelist and arias)

Hanno Müller-Brachmann
bass-baritone (Jesus and arias)

J.S. Bach's great St. John Passion returns to the BSO repertoire after an absence of thirty years. The esteemed Japanese conductor Masaaki Suzuki, is a noted period-performance scholar and director of the Bach Collegium Japan. He brings his historically informed approach to these performances of one of Bach's greatest achievements. Bach revised the work several times after its first performance in 1724, but the "definitive" 1749 version, restores much of the original score. Joining Mr. Suzuki, the BSO, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus is a terrific cast of soloists including the Czech soprano Blažíková in her BSO debut.

It's an unusual thing for a modern orchestra and chorus to perform baroque pieces nowadays, but Bach's St. John Passion is well worth hearing, and Maestro Suzuki is certainly one who knows the music. So I think it's worth hearing. Sadly, the reviews were mixed. The Globe was not thrilled(but see the comments on the article for a rejoinder from a member of the chorus). The online Boston Musical Intelligencer was, with commenters both agreeing and disagreeing with the rave review. I was at an open rehearsal Wednesday evening, and the tenor was having vocal trouble. But just listening to it for the text and the music, rather than specifics of the performances, made it a worthwhile experience.

As usual, the BSO website offers their "Media Center" for additional information, and the Program Notes, available through that page or directly, give an English translation of the text, as well as a whole lot of other info.

The usual pre-concert features will be on WCRB at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, and the Performance is scheduled for 8:00.

You might also be interested in watching and hearing the videos WCRB is offering on their site of a performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt. I attended a performance, and liked it pretty well.

BSO — 2011/04/14-16

2011-04-16T18:18:00.002-04:00

Today there's another BSO concert to be streamed over WCRB. The website of the BSO has the following to say.

French conductor Stéphane Denève, music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and chief conductor designate of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, makes his Boston Symphony debut substituting for Sir Colin Davis in these concerts. As originally planned, acclaimed American pianist Jonathan Biss is soloist in Beethoven’s epic Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor, the last and most powerful of Beethoven’s concertos. Replacing the two originally scheduled works by Sibelius are two works from the French repertoire for which Mr. Denève has an inborn affinity—Albert Roussel’s Symphony No. 3 and Maurice Ravel’s La Valse. Commissioned for the BSO’s 50th anniversary, Roussel’s multi-faceted and colorful Symphony No. 3 was premiered by Serge Koussevitzky and the orchestra in October 1930. Completed in 1920, Ravel’s brilliantly atmospheric masterpiece La Valse, which closes the program, was the composer’s unsettling musical farewell to the golden era of Vienna.

The Globe liked it. I particularly enjoyed the Roussel symphony. As I commented elsewhere, I had been looking forward to the Sibelius (5th Symphony and Tapiola) which had originally been scheduled for after intermission. But Sir Colin Davis had to withdraw, and the conductor taking his place is more familiar with Roussel and Ravel. But after hearing the Roussel symphony on Thursday, I'm glad that the change was made and I got a chance to hear it. I also found the pianist in the Beethoven not forceful enough: the piano got swallowed by the orchestra too often. But it's still the "Emperor" Concerto, and worth hearing.

BSO — 2011/04/06-12

2011-04-09T12:36:00.002-04:00

As usual, we start with the BSO website description of this week's program (with my highlighting of composers, works, and conductor/soloists).

Johannes Debus, music director of the Canadian Opera Company, made his BSO debut last summer at Tanglewood, replacing James Levine to lead a concert performance of Mozart’s delightful opera "The Abduction from the Seraglio." Mr. Debus now makes his BSO subscription series debut, stepping in to lead Sir Colin Davis’s originally planned program of music by Mozart and Haydn, with BSO principal William R. Hudgins as soloist in Mozart’s serenely beautiful Clarinet Concerto, one of his last completed works. Opening the program is Mozart’s rarely heard Symphony No. 32, a single-movement, eight-minute piece that’s more like an overture than a symphony, and which has not been played by the BSO in Symphony Hall since 1974. In contrast, Haydn’s Symphony No. 97, premiered in London in 1792 at the height of his international reputation, is a full-fledged four-movement symphony demonstrating the wealth of Haydn’s wit and craft.

The Globe reviewer liked it, but didn't exactly "rave." I enjoyed the Thursday performance also. But it didn't excite me. I had wanted to jump up and shout, "Bravo!" after the clarinet concerto and the Haydn symphony, but neither was thrillingly enough played to warrant such a reaction. So I sat in my seat and applauded vigorously for the thoroughly enjoyable performances.

As always, you can listen to the webstream on WCRB (this site also has a link for "Concert Previews and Interviews) — concert at 8:00, with "pre-game show" at 7:00. There is also introductory material available at the BSO website. Go to this page, and click the "Launch" button for the Media Center.

BSO — 2011/04/02

2011-04-02T19:20:00.002-04:00

Sorry for not posting for a while. The BSO was on tour two weeks ago, and I was away last week.

Anyway, as I write, the pre-concert show on WCRB has already begun. Here's what the BSO says about this week's program.

Having appeared with the BSO several times at Tanglewood, the veteran American conductor John Nelson makes his subscription series debut joined by Evgeny Kissin as soloist in two contrasting concertos. Chopin wrote both of his piano concertos—the First in E minor and No. 2 in F minor—within a year of each other as vehicles for himself, then barely out of his teens and having barely finished his formal studies. Grieg’s concerto—one of the most popular of all time—is also an early work, exhibiting both a Romantic bent and a hint of the folk-music influence that would inform Grieg’s later music. Also on the program are two contrasting orchestral works by Franz Liszt, the 200th anniversary of whose birth is being marked this season. The Mephisto Waltz—which exists also in a version for solo piano—depicts a village wedding at which Mephistopheles seizes a strolling fiddler’s violin and strikes up a wild, diabolic dance. Orpheus, one of the dozen symphonic poems that typified Liszt’s orchestral output in the 1850s, is a contemplative work inspired by the poet-musician famous from Greek mythology for calming the wild beasts with his singing.

Interestingly, Ron Della Chiesa said at the beginning of the broadcast that they will be playing a recording of one of the performances earlier this week rather than broadcasting tonight's performance live. The Globe's review was lukewarm, but favorable enough to indicate it's worth hearing.

BSO — 2011/03/10-12; Met 03/12

2011-03-12T12:41:00.001-05:00

As I write, the Met is broadcasting Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov." If you read this soon enough, you can catch some of it on the web over WHRB.

This evening the BSO is giving Symphony No. 93 by Haydn, Bela Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, and, after intermission, the Beethoven 5th Symphony. Guest conductor is Roberto Abbado, and Peter Serkin is the pianist.

I heard the performance on Thursday evening and really enjoyed it. In retrospect, I guess the ensemble seemed a bit ragged at points, but the most important thing was that the Bartók concerto was actually enjoyable to listen to (for me anyway), and it's always a pleasant surprise when something by Bartók is enjoyable. Of course Haydn is always worth hearing. In the Beethoven some reviewers thought the tempi were too fast. I hadn't noticed it, but come to think of it, the beginning of the fourth movement was definitely faster than some conductors used to take it. Anyway, I think it's all worth hearing, and I want to record the Bartók.

Here's how the BSO website describes the program.

The intense poetic individuality of Beethoven’s nine symphonies heralded the start of Romanticism. In his Symphony No. 5—the most immediately recognizable symphonic work in the repertoire—he focuses almost obsessively on the famous opening four-note motif, which infuses the entire piece as it moves through a wide variety of moods from the dark C minor of the opening to the work’s triumphant C major close. Hearing Beethoven’s Fifth played live by a great orchestra never fails to revitalize this familiar piece for any listener. Haydn’s Symphony No. 93, which opens this program, was one of a dozen such works he wrote for audiences in London, where he spent two triumphant musical seasons in the first half of the 1790s. Dating from the height of his international career, Haydn’s twelve “London” symphonies (Nos. 93-103) stand as a culmination of the genre in the Classical era. Between the two symphonies on this program, acclaimed American pianist Peter Serkin joins Roberto Abbado and the BSO for one of the mid-twentieth century’s most engagingly atmospheric concertos, Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, intended originally as a vehicle for his wife, and written not long after the Hungarian composer’s ever-popular Concerto for Orchestra. [Emphasis added.]

For more from the website about the music you can go to this page and launch the media center.

And here's a link to the review in the Boston Globe.

BSO — 2011/03/03-08

2011-03-05T18:15:00.003-05:00

From the BSO website:

In these special concerts, Christian Tetzlaff is soloist in all three works on the program, including the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s new work for violin and orchestra, a BSO commission for Tetzlaff. On these concerts Christian Tetzlaff also performs Mozart’s single-movement Rondo in C and Bartók’s scintillating Violin Concerto No. 2, influenced by the folk music of Central Europe. *
BSO Music Director James Levine has had to withdraw from his remaining scheduled concerts of the BSO's 2010-11 season, March 3-19, including Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and Kennedy Center appearances, though all concerts will take place as scheduled.

Maestro Levine is forced to cancel appearances due to ill effects from a recent procedure addressing his ongoing back issues, further complicated by a viral infection.

*Emphasis added.

Not only has Maestro Levine withdrawn from his remaining concerts this season (this series and four touring performances later this month, but he has also resigned the Music Directorship, effective September 1, 2011. Here's a link to the official announcement. IMO, it was a decision that had to be made. His ongoing back problems have been forcing him to cancel far too many appearances. Still it's sad that it has come to this. He's done an excellent job with the orchestra in the time he's been here, and it's unfortunate to miss out on "what might have been" if he had been healthy.

Brian Bell of WCRB has recorded an interview with the Managing Director of the BSO, Mark Volpe about Maestro Levine's resignation, and it will be broadcast at some point during the hour before the concert. It is or was also on the WCRB website, and, having listened to it there, I can tell you it's really interesting.

BSO Assistant Conductor Marcelo Lehninger is substituting for Maestro Levine. I was there on Thursday evening, and didn't really care for either the Birtwistle concerto, which had its world premiere that evening, nor the Bartók. But if you like 20th-21st century music, you might like this show. And the violinist handled it well, I guess.

BSO — 2011/02/19; Met — 02/19

2011-02-17T23:01:00.001-05:00

The BSO is off this week, so WCRB will stream some recordings made during concerts in prior years. Here's their description:

Levine Conducts Mozart and Mahler
BSO Music Director James Levine conducts the orchestra in concert performances of Mozart's Symphonies Nos. 14 and 18, recorded in Oct. 2009, and Mahler's Symphony No. 6, recorded in Oct. 2008.

The show begins, as usual, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Before that, at 1:00 p.m., you can hear Donizetti's "Don Pasquale," live from the Met, streamed by WHRB. James Levine was scheduled to conduct.

BSO — 2011/02/10-12

2011-02-12T18:23:00.003-05:00

Sorry to be so late with this. It's been a busy several days. But I definitely recommend tonight's BSO concert. Here's what the website has to say.

Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki returns to the BSO podium with a widely varied program, and is joined by German cellist Alban Gerhardt for the American premiere of the Korean-German composer Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, written for Gerhardt. Gerhardt also plays Dvořák’s surpassingly melodic Silent Woods, an 1894 reworking of a movement from his 1883 piano suite From the Bohemian Woods. Haydn’s Symphony No. 59 in A major, nicknamed “Fire” has never been performed by the BSO. The Finnish composer Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5 is one of the composer’s best known, a majestic masterpiece completed in 1919.

The Globe reviewer liked it. I was there on Thursday, and I enjoyed it too. The piece is definitely modern, but to my ears it is also definitely musical. One thing that is really amazing is that the cellist plays it entirely from memory, and did so at the world premiere as well, after having studied it for about a month. He told us that during the pre-concert talk. He also said he got a little lost toward the end in that first performance. The cellist and composer agreed that the BSO plays it very well indeed, and the "lecturer" suggested that it might be partly because of their recent experience with the concerto for flute and oboe by Ligeti. Chin studied for a while under Ligeti, and there is a bit of similarity between the sound in tonight's concerto and that of Ligeti. I thought the other pieces went well also, so it's a concert well worth hearing IMO. Amazing that the BSO has never played the Haydn 59th Symphony before this week, which means that the entire first half of the concert is music that's new to them.

Usual time, usual stations.

BSO — 2011/02/03-08; Met — 02/05

2011-02-05T14:01:00.002-05:00

This week's BSO program has Moussorgsky, Beethoven, and Prokofiev. Here's how the website describes it.

Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo makes his BSO debut in these concerts and is joined by Romanian pianist Radu Lupu in Beethoven’s stormy Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor. Oramo also leads Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony, a three movement work moving from dark to light that Prokofiev wrote just after World War II in the Soviet Union. Beginning the program is Mussorgsky’s thrilling Night on Bald Mountain. [emphasis added]

I was there on Thursday, and, frankly, I was not looking forward to the "Night on Bald Mountain." I guess I consider it one of these pieces that gets played too often on the radio and not really worth spending time on. But, with an assist from the pre-concert lecture, I actually found it interesting and worthwhile. The Beethoven was well-played, I thought. The pre-concert lecture described the Prokofiev symphony as one of his most tragic works, but with that expectation in mind, I actually found it very engaging. I joined the standing ovation at the end. The conductor uses very broad gestures and swings and sways. But as the Globe reviewer notes, he drew top-notch playing from everyone.

As always, you can listen on WCRB. The concert begins at 8:00. And there is information about the music on the BSO website. Click on Media Center.

As I type, the Met is giving Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, one of my favorites. James Levine is conducting.

Everything is available at the usual times over the usual webstreams.

BSO — 2011/01/207-02/01; Met — 01/29

2011-01-29T15:04:00.001-05:00

From the BSO website:

In these concerts led by the great German conductor Christoph von Dohnányi, BSO principal players Elizabeth Rowe, flute, and John Ferrillo, oboe, step to the front of the orchestra to perform György Ligeti’s 1972 Double Concerto. Making her BSO subscription series debut, the young German violinist Arabella Steinbacher is soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4. Antonín Dvořák wrote his powerful yet elegant Symphony No. 7 for London’s Royal Philharmonic Society. The success of this 1885 work helped greatly to establish the composer’s international fame.

The Globe reviewer liked the Ligeti and thought the rest was okay.

I was in the back row of the second balcony, and unfortunately I was listening more to the sound than the music. It seems more balanced than my regular subscription seat, where brass and timpani predominate; but you still can't hear the reeds through the full orchestra playing forte.

It was an enjoyable concert. I had taken the precaution of listening to the BSO "Media Player" (click on the "Launch" button under "Ligeti, Mozart and Dvořák" on the page I've linked) and had a foretaste of the Ligeti sound, and knowing what I was in for definitely made it easier to enjoy. I definitely recommend listening to it if you aren't sure about the Ligeti. You can skip the second part, about the Dvořák.

Anyway, Ligeti has an interesting sound and technique. As the Globe reviewer notes, there are microtones, so the sound is often sort of a wash, rather than crisp. And the music is generally quiet — so much so that it never drowned out the faint ringing I have had in my left ear for the past several years. I thought the violinist in the Mozart was good, and I liked her cadenzas. The Dvořák was an enjoyable performance of something I'm slightly familiar with.

As I write, the Met is doing "Tosca." Puccini is not my favorite opera composer. The tenor's voice seemed tight in "Recondita Armonia," but the soprano did well in "Vissi d'Arte."

BSO — 2011/01/20-25; Met — 01/22 (Revised)

2011-01-21T22:54:00.001-05:00

The BSO website says this about the program that will be played on Saturday this week.

The illustrious American conductor Lorin Maazel brings a program anchored by Alexander Scriabin’s lushly exotic Poem of Ecstasy, which features kaleidoscopic orchestral effects including a major role for the Symphony Hall organ. Equally exotic but on a smaller scale is a 1917 Stravinsky work, The Song of the Nightingale. This symphonic poem of music from his opera The Nightingale is based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale with a Chinese theme. Tchaikovsky’s light, familiar Suite No. 3 for orchestra begins these concerts.

There's a lot more available if you click Launch Media Center on the page where I found the description. One minor tidbit is that when Maestro Maazel made his debut with the BSO fifty years ago, the Stravinsky and Scriabin pieces were on one of the two programs he gave. As always, you can hear the concert by listening to WCRB over the web at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, January 22. And as always there is an introductory show beginning an hour earlier.

I haven't found a review of the Thursday performance in print or on line.* I liked the Tchaikovsky best. It was all easy to take, and the last part was a big theme and variations, with the final variation being a polonaise. I really like the polonaise rhythm, and as any who know "Eugene Onegin" can attest, Tchaikovsky knows how to write a polonaise for orchestra. I very nearly gave a standing ovation. After intermission was okay. The Stravinsky was interesting, but I was ready for it to be over a few minutes before Stravinsky was. And the Scriabin was big and loud. Both pieces had some nifty solo playing.

*The Boston Globe finally got around to publishing a review in today's (Saturday) paper. Faint praise, except for the soloists, whom he names. — Note added January 22.

On Saturday afternoon, the Met is giving Verdi's "Rigoletto" at 1:00. WHRB will stream it. When I became interested in opera, the first complete opera recording I had was a Christmas present of "Rigoletto" with Leonard Warren in the title role and Toscanini conducting. If I'm not mistaken Erna Berger was Gilda, and the other principals were Nan Merriman and Italo Tajo. Anyway, I had been quite unfamiliar with that opera, but it proved quite satisfying. I've come to prefer some other Verdi operas, such as "Trovatore," "Don Carlo," and "Forza del Destiono," for example. But "Rigoletto" has fine music well matched to the tragic story.

BSO — 2011/01/13-18; Met — 01/15

2011-01-13T14:19:00.001-05:00

The BSO website gives us the following information about the concert which I'll be attending tonight and which you can listen to over WCRB on Saturday.

Program:

DEBUSSY

Two Preludes—

Feuilles mortes (from Book 2) and

Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest (from Book 1)

performed in their original piano versions

and in orchestrations by Colin Matthews

DELIUS

Paris: A Nocturne (The Song of a Great City)

MOZART

Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, K.467

STRAUSS

Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks

Guest Artists:

Sir Mark Elder, conductor

Lars Vogt, piano

About the Music

The English conductor Sir Mark Elder returns to the BSO podium for an eclectic program centering on Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 to be played by the outstanding German pianist Lars Vogt. These concerts begin with a selection of the contemporary English composer Colin Matthews’s orchestrations of Claude Debussy’s piano Preludes. The English composer Frederick Delius was known for his picturesque, illustrative scores; his 1901 Paris, A Nocturne is subtitled “Song of a Great City.” Strauss’s rollicking tone poem Till Eulenspiegel employs pioneering orchestral effects in telling the wild story of a mischievous rogue.

Additional information is available through the BSO website.

Debussy and Delius aren't my favorite composers by a long shot, but Delius is usually listenable. The Mozart should make it worth going out on a winter's evening, but I may not stick around for the Strauss, which I consider undeserving of the frequency with whic it is performed. Okay, we've heard it enough; let's move on. In fact, most of Richard Strauss's music belongs in that category, IMO.

My recent opera experience reminds me that I should probably note the availability of the live Saturday afternoon (Eastern Time) broadcasts of Metropolitan Opera performances. This week it's "La Traviata." If you don't have a broadcast station available for it, you can listen to the webstream via WHRB (see side panel for a link).

Opera Week (Includes BSO 2011/01/06-08)

2011-01-06T00:07:00.005-05:00

Last night (Wednesday, January 5) I went to a nearby movie theater for replay of the December 11 HD transmission of "Don Carlo" from the Metropolitan Opera. It was great. The most outstanding of a fine cast was Marina Poplavskaya, as Elisabetta. The basses were great as well, especially Ferruccio Furlanetto as Filippo and the unnamed comprimario who sang the role of the monk who seems to be the supposedly dead Emperor Carlo V. It's a great way to see first rate opera productions without having to travel far or pay opera house prices. Here is a link to a page giving locations outside the United States. For the United States, there are so many locations that you have two options, and then you enter your location to find nearby theaters. This is the page where you begin. And here's a page with the schedule for the rest of the season. They show dates for "encore performances" in the U.S. and Canada. I don't know if they are available in other countries. The live performances are Saturday matinees in New York, which means Saturday evenings in Europe.

I definitely want to see "Nixon in China," "Lucia di Lammermoor," "Il Trovatore," and "Die Walküre." If you aren't already an opera fan, my top recommendation would be "Il Trovatore." It's full of glorious music. I wish I had got to this sooner, because "Don Carlo" is even better, IMO. But both are fine examples of Verdi at his best.

You gotta try it. Even the ticket taker left the door to the theater open so he could hear it and occasionally came in to take a peek at last night's show.

This week the BSO is also doing opera in concert performances: "Oedipus Rex" by Stravinsky and "Bluebeard's Castle" by Bartók. Here's what the BSO website says about it:

And here's a link to their page, for further information. As usual, it can be heard over WCRB's stream at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, with "pre-game" show beginning an hour earlier. The Thursday performance is part of my subscription, so I'll be there. I don't expect it to be as great as "Don Carlo." Less than 60 years separates to dates of composition, but the music of Stravinsky and Bartók is so different from Verdi's as to seem to come from a different world, one in which I am much less at home. But the performances tonight could be exciting and gripping in their own way.

New Year's Concert etc.

2011-01-01T15:54:00.000-05:00

If you missed the live performance of the Vienna Philharmonic's 2011 New Year's Day Concert (or even if you didn't), you can hear it over WCRB on Sunday, January 2, at 3:00 p.m., "Boston Time."

Also I was wrong to assume that the entire Bach Christmas Oratorio would be given last weekend. They only played the first three parts, leaving the final three for this weekend, I suppose. But I haven't been listening carefully enough to find out exactly when they will present (have presented) them. My best guess is that Part 5 or 6 will be presented sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, January 2.

Christmas Radio/Webstream

2010-12-24T01:14:00.000-05:00

December 24 at 10:00 a.m. Boston Time ( = 3:00 p.m. England Time) WCRB will give a live broadcast/stream of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College Cambridge. So if you have no other source for it, you can listen there.

And then in the evening, at 8:00 Boston time, they'll present the Handel & Haydn's performance of Messiah, recorded earlier this month in Symphony Hall.

Finally, Bach's Christmas Oratorio will be broadcast/streamed in a recording by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Ricardo Chailly. It seems it will be done in three installments: Friday at 3:00 p.m.; Saturday at 10:00 a.m.; and Sunday at 10:00 a.m.

Merry Christmas!

Orgy Period — December, 2010

2010-12-14T14:34:00.000-05:00

I've been figuratively asleep at the proverbial switch. WHRB's (not to be confused with WCRB) current Winter Orgy® Period is in full swing (or full classical at the moment). Right now (Tuesday afternoon) they are in the midst of the Robert Schumann Orgy®, in observance of the 200th anniversary year of his birth. With breaks from 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., this orgy continues until 10:00 p.m., Thursday, December 16. On Sunday afternoon, the Leonard Bernstein Orgy begins. Later there will be the Alban Berg Orgy.

We've already missed the William Schuman Centenary Orgy (not to be confused with Robert Schumann), the Warhorse Orgy, the Baroque Violin Orgy, and the Impressionist Music Orgy.

If you're at all interested, you can get the (sorta) complete program guide at www.whrb.org — also the site to visit for the webstreams. You'll note that regular programming also includes Metropolitan Opera broadcasts (including Don Carlo, one of my favorites) this Saturday, their own Historic Performances program, Sunday Night at the Opera, and various specials and concert rebroadcasts from San Francisco and the Royal Concertgebouw once the orgy period and Harvard hockey games are out of the way.

Boston Pops; Handel and Haydn Messiah

2010-12-09T16:05:00.002-05:00

The Boston Symphony is on hiatus through the end of December. In its place, the Boston Pops are giving their annual Holiday Pops concerts daily through December 26, except on Christmas day itself. WCRB has announced that they will broadcast and stream this Saturday's concert, which begins at 7:30. As usual, there will be a lead-in show starting at 7:00. I don't see anything official about the remaining Saturdays of December or about January 1, but I would not be surprised if December 11 and 18 also included those evenings' Pops concerts. (The BSO will return to Symphony Hall on January 6, with a broadcast on Saturday, January 8.)

Every December, the Handel and Haydn Society performs Handel's "Messiah." This year's performances took place last weekend, under the baton of their still-new music director, Harry Christophers, and WCRB will broadcast and stream this year's version twice: Sunday December 19, at 2:00 p.m. (good for listeners in Europe, for whom this will be Sunday evening), and Friday, December 24, at 8:00 p.m. (which translates to sometime during Christmas day for Antipodean and Asian listeners). The performances were well received by the Boston Globe's critic.

BSO — 2010/12/2-4

2010-12-04T12:20:00.002-05:00

I was in Symphony Hall again on Thursday for this weekend's program, described as follows on the BSO website.

James Levine leads the BSO and Danish violinist Nikolaj Znaider in Mozart’s elegant Violin Concerto No. 3, one of the five concertos for the instrument Mozart wrote in his late teens. Also on the program is Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. Which he wrote in 1845 following a bout with debilitating depression, but the work is ultimately affirmative in character. Continuing another cycle, John Harbison’s Symphony No. 2 is the third of the six Harbison symphonies to be performed by the BSO this season and next. Written in 1987, its four movements are titled evocatively “Dawn,” “Daylight,” “Dusk,” and “Darkness.”

I thought it was all worth hearing. While the Harbison 2nd Symphony isn't quite as accessible to me as the 1st, I'm looking forward to hearing it again in this evening's broadcast.

If you're thinking of listening, once more I recommend going to the BSO page that links preview material, and if you've got the time for it, there will probably be some good preview features both on the Mozart and the Harbison during WCRB's "pre-game show" at 7:00, Boston Time.

The Boston Globe review also contains the reviewer's description of the Harbison symphony, along with his review of the performances.

BSO — Rehearing

2010-12-03T15:10:00.001-05:00

I did get a ticket to last Tuesday's repeat performance of the Schumann and Harbison symphonies,* and I'm glad I was able to do so.

I enjoyed the Schumann "Rhenish" Symphony even more than on Friday. The brass section had a prominent part in the symphony, and they were in top form — as good as in last season's Beethoven 6th Symphony.

But it was even more worthwhile for the replay of John Harbison's First Symphony. On Friday, I was especially impressed by the verve and dynamic rhythms of the fourth movement. But on Tuesday, I became aware of the musical beauties of the first three movements — I noticed things that I hadn't in my first hearing of the work, and they greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the piece.

Having a chance to hear a new piece of music several times in a short period is certainly a great help to appreciation. In its early years, when programs weren't set long in advance, the BSO sometimes would play a new piece a second time shortly after the first performance. It's unfortunate that they no longer do that. Maybe when composers get commissions, they should stipulate a level of repetition.

*On both occasions, the concert concluded with the Prelude and Liebestod from "Tristan und Isoolde," and on both occasions I left before it was played. While I enjoy a fair amount of Wagner's music, I find "Tristan" tedious, and I did not want to spoil the experience of Schumann and Harbison by sitting through the opera excerpts.

BSO — 2010/11/26-30: Review and /Comments

2010-11-27T15:20:00.000-05:00

The Boston Globe reviewer liked the Harbison Symphony (and the Wagner), but thought the Schumann performance was sub-par. I found the Harbison "interesting," with the last movement really enjoyable.

If you're going to listen, maybe the ideal would be to listen without any previews, but record the performance as it's happening. Then go to all the info on the BSO website, and after that, play the recording with the program notes in front of you.

But if you can't do that, then I strongly recommend reading and listening to what the website provides. I don't know what will be on WCRB in the hour before the concert and during the intermission, but there will probably be more good stuff about the Harbison symphony during one or the other or both.

I want to hear it again, so I'm seriously considering getting a ticket for next Tuesday's performance.

BSO — 2010/11/26-30

2010-11-25T22:11:00.000-05:00

When I learned that the BSO is having a mini Schumann festival and putting on all six Harbison symphonies over this season and the next, I "had" to get a ticket for tomorrow's matinee, described as follows by the BSO website (http://www.bso.org):

In celebration of Robert Schumann's bicentennial, the BSO performs the composer's four symphonies in a three-week span, continuing this week with James Levine leading the Symphony No. 3, Rhenish, which was inspired by the composer's environs in Northern Germany and the Rhine River. Maestro Levine also continues the BSO's two-season cycle of complete John Harbisonsymphonies.

This week's Harbison is Symphony No. 1, and the concert concludes with the Prelude and Love-death from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. The show isn't being given on Thursday evening because it's Thanksgiving. And I'm glad the Wagner comes at the end, because I'll bee able to hear what I want and leave early. I like a fair amount of Wagner, but Tristan und Isolde has never appealed to me.

Various background info is available on the page from which I copied the quote above.http://www.bso.org/bso/mods/content1.jsp?id=43200080

And as always, the concert is streamed over WCRB — http://www.995allclassical.org — at 8:00 p.m. "Boston Time" with pre-game show at 7:00.