BSO/Classical New England — 2023/05/13

Now that the regular BSO season is ended, WCRB is giving us "encore broadcasts." This evening's is from last July at Tanglewood, as they tell us here:

Saturday, May 13, 2023
8:00 PM

Karina Canellakis returns to the Berkshires to lead the Boston Symphony in Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances,” and Emanuel Ax is the soloist in Chopin’s dramatic Piano Concerto No. 2.

Karina Canellakis, conductor 
Emanuel Ax, piano

Richard WAGNER Prelude to Lohengrin, Act 1
Frédéric CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2
RACHMANINOFF Symphonic Dances

This concert was originally broadcast on July 22, 2022 and is no longer available on demand.

I posted about it at the time, and the BSO performance detail page is still available.

There was no review in the Intelligencer, but the Globe had a review of the whole weekend, and the reviewer liked the show on the 22nd.

Bottom line: it's worth listening to, IMO.

Tanglewood — 2022/07/22-24

 Friday, July 22, 2022.

Here's WCRB's "just the facts" announcement of what we'll hear via their station this evening from Tanglewood:

Friday, July 22, 2022
8:00 PM

Tonight at 8, Karina Canellakis returns to the Berkshires to lead the Boston Symphony in Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances,” and Emanuel Ax is the soloist in Chopin’s dramatic Piano Concerto No. 2.

Karina Canellakis, conductor 
Emanuel Ax, piano

Richard WAGNER Prelude to Lohengrin, Act 1
Frédéric CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2
RACHMANINOFF Symphonic Dances

The Wagner is kind of thrilling. We had (I still have somewhere) recordings of the Chopin piano concertos Dad liked them. I don't remember this one specifically, but both have some good music in them. The Rachmaninoff is okay, not on my top 100 list, but definitely tolerable. As you'd expect with dances, it's got a strong beat.

For further information, including program notes and performer information, check out the BSO's own performance detail page. 

Saturday, July 23, 2022.

On Saturday, we get the following:

Saturday, July 23, 2022
8:00 PM

Saturday night at 8pm, in a concert by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Andris Nelsons leads Gustav Mahler’s meditation on grief and triumph, and soprano Christine Goerke sings a rarely heard work by Berlioz.

Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra 
Andris Nelsons, conductor 
Christine Goerke, soprano 

Hector BERLIOZ The Death of Cleopatra 
Gustav MAHLER Symphony No. 5

You can usually count on Berlioz for good stuff. Mahler can be long winded, but the music is pretty good.

Here's the link to the BSO performance detail page, where you can find what they think about it.

 Sunday, July 24, 2022.

The BSO rounds out the weekend with this concert on Sunday:

Sunday, July 24, 2022
7:00 PM (delayed broadcast of 2:30 PM concert)

Sunday night at 7pm, soprano Latonia Moore sings George Walker’s BSO-commissioned “Lilacs,” and Seong-Jin Cho is the soloist in Brahms’s mighty Piano Concerto No. 2, all led by Andris Nelsons.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Latonia Moore, soprano
Seong-Jin Cho, piano

William Grant STILL In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy 
George WALKER Lilacs
Johannes BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2

"Everybody" like Brahms better than I do, so don't let me dissuade you from listening, even though I think I'll like the Still piece better. I have no idea about Walker's "Lilacs," but with new compositions "you pays your money (or listens in) and takes your chances." Unfortunately, the performance detail page doesn't seem to have a full program note for "Lilacs."

Remember that the Sunday concert broadcast begins at 7:00, Boston Time, not 8:00 as on Friday and Saturday.

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/04/04

I hope you've noted that for now WCRB is giving us encore performances six nights a week, not just on Saturdays,but Monday through Friday as well. There is a link on their homepage, which is also where you go to listen over the web. Also linked there is the page briefly detailing tonight's performance, with further links to interviews with the soloist and the conductor.

I definitely liked it and recommend listening. Here's what I wrote about it at the time:

"Last week I went to Colorado for the wedding of a cousin and didn't have time to post about last Saturday's concert. The same program was given on Tuesday this week, and I heard it then. I'm sorry I wasn't around to recommend it last week, because it was a gem. Fortunately there is still the rebroadcast on Monday, April 30. Listen if you can. Here's how the BSO's program detail page describes it:

Russian-Ossetian conductor Tugan Sokhiev and Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki both make their BSO debuts in these concerts, working together in Frédéric Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1. Already acclaimed as a prodigy, Chopin was just twenty when he wrote and premiered this concerto in 1830. The piece blends Classical concerto form with the composer's entirely individual piano writing and lyrical Romanticism. Felix Mendelssohn began his Symphony No. 4, ["Italian"] also in 1830 during an extended stay in Italy. The predominantly cheerful opening movement reflects his pleasure in the Mediterranean environs. Opening the program is Benjamin Britten's  Simple Symphony, an utterly charming string-orchestra work created from fragments of his youthful compositions.

(Some emphasis added.)

The Britten piece was light and full of youthful good spirits — a very enjoyable beginning to the evening. It's a piece I wasn't familiar with, so it was a very pleasant surprise, given my general impression of later Britten. On the other hand, my father had a recording of the Chopin concerto, and we played it fairly regularly. The performance in this concert lived up to my expectations. While I don't have the expertise to pick up all the subtleties the reviewers noted in the piano playing, it seemed excellent to me. The only problem was that in several places where a solo horn was playing along with the piano, the horn drowned out the piano. Maybe the radio engineers can fix that. After intermission, Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony,was just what I expected. So it was thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end.

The reviews were enthusiastic, both in the Globe and in the Musical Intelligencer. So if you listen to WCRB at 8:00 p.m […], you're in for a treat."

BSO — 2018/04/21

Last week I went to Colorado for the wedding of a cousin and didn't have time to post about last Saturday's concert. The same program was given on Tuesday this week, and I heard it then. I'm sorry I wasn't around to recommend it last week, because it was a gem. Fortunately there is still the rebroadcast on Monday, April 30. Listen if you can. Here's how the BSO's program detail page describes it:

Russian-Ossetian conductor Tugan Sokhiev and Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki both make their BSO debuts in these concerts, working together in Frédéric Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1. Already acclaimed as a prodigy, Chopin was just twenty when he wrote and premiered this concerto in 1830. The piece blends Classical concerto form with the composer's entirely individual piano writing and lyrical Romanticism. Felix Mendelssohn began his Symphony No. 4, ["Italian"] also in 1830 during an extended stay in Italy. The predominantly cheerful opening movement reflects his pleasure in the Mediterranean environs. Opening the program is Benjamin Britten's  Simple Symphony, an utterly charming string-orchestra work created from fragments of his youthful compositions.

(Some emphasis added.)

The Britten piece was light and full of youthful good spirits — a very enjoyable beginning to the evening. It's a piece I wasn't familiar with, so it was a very pleasant surprise, given my general impression of later Britten. On the other hand, my father had a recording of the Chopin concerto, and we played it fairly regularly. The performance in this concert lived up to my expectations. While I don't have the expertise to pick up all the subtleties the reviewers noted in the piano playing,, it seemed excellent to me. The only problem was that in several places where a solo horn was playing along with the piano, the horn drowned out the piano. Maybe the radio engineers can fix that. After intermission, Mendelssohn;s Italian Symphony,was just what I expected. So it was thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end.

The reviews were enthusiastic, both in the Globe and in the Musical Intelligencer. So if you listen to WCRB at 8:00 p.m EDST on April 30, you're in for a treat.

Tanglewood — 2017/08/04-06

My father had a record (now mine), which he very much liked listening to, of Chopin's first piano concerto, with Edward Kilenyi as soloist. He also had Chopin's second — possibly on the same record or possibly another. We didn't listen to the 2nd nearly as often as the 1st, but I've heard it on the radio several times over the years. So I'm very much looking forward the becoming reacquainted with these friends from the past when they open the show tonight and tomorrow. The rest of the weekend from Tanglewood should be good too.


Friday, August 4, 2017.  The orchestra's program detail page has this synopsis of the program:

UnderScore FridayHans Graf conducts Chopin and Rachmaninoff featuring pianist Garrick Ohlsson 
Tanglewood 
Koussevitzky Music Shed - Lenox, MA - View MapOn Friday, August 4, Mr. Ohlsson performs Chopin's First Piano Concerto, written shortly after the composer finished conservatory. Maestro Graf also leads the BSO in Rachmaninoff's melancholic Symphony No. 3, the composer's final work in the genre, written almost 30 years after his second.

(Some emphasis added.)

The page, as usual, has links to audio previews, program notes, and performer bios. This is another of their "Underscore Fridays," in which they enhance our enjoyment of the music by having an orchestra member give brief introductory remarks from the stage before the music begins. This evening we'll hear from violinist Jennie Shames.


Saturday, August 5, 2017.  The second Chopin piano concerto is followed after intermission by Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream." The program detail page provides additional information:

On Saturday, August 5, Mr. Ohlsson returns to perform Chopin's Second Piano Concerto with the BSO, a virtuosic and remarkably successful work considering it was written when the composer was still a student and just 20 years old. The second half of the program features one of the best-known musical works inspired by Shakespeare-Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream-in a specially designed production adapted by stage director Bill Barclay, which received its world premiere with the BSO at Symphony Hall in Boston in early 2016 as part of the BSO's three-week Shakespeare celebration honoring the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death. Mr. Graf and the orchestra are joined for this performance by soprano Kiera Duffy, mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer, and singers from the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Chorus, as well as four actors, including Will Lyman as Oberon; Karen MacDonald as Titania; and Caleb Mayo as Felix Mendelssohn/Puck. The costumed actors will perform various passages from A Midsummer Night's Dream interspersed throughout the performance, as prescribed in Mendelssohn's score, with costumes by Kathleen Doyle and sets by Cristina Todesco.

(Some emphasis added.)

See the program detail page for the additional background material linked there. As mentioned in the program notes, the Mendelssohn performance was given (after two other pieces) in 2016. At that time, I posted about it. Here's my reaction to it at that time:

The Boston Musical Intelligencer … found the presentation of the Mendelssohn well done by some participants but flawed in concept.

I tend to agree with BMInt on the Mendelssohn. It makes sense to put music intended to accompany a play into context, but as constructed the whole seemed less than the sum of its parts. I wonder how it will all come across over radio or webstream without the action being visible. 

Sunday, August 6, 2017.  As the program detail page tells us:

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma returns to the Shed on Sunday, August 6, with David Zinman on a program featuring two works by Schumann-the free-flowing and adventurous Cello Concerto, featuring Mr. Ma, and the elevating Symphony No. 2 in C, the longest of the composer's four symphonies. The afternoon concert opens with Mozart's Symphony No. 25, last performed by the BSO at Tanglewood in 2000. 

At the advice of his doctors, Maestro Christoph von Dohnányi regrets that he cannot appear with the Boston Symphony this summer at Tanglewood. He is continuing to heal from a fall he suffered earlier this year and looks forward to leading the BSO as scheduled in November.
Conductor David Zinman replaces Maestro von Dohnányi for the Sunday, August 6, program featuring Yo-Yo Ma in Schumann's Cello Concerto. The program also includes Mozart's Symphony No. 25 and Schumann's Symphony No. 2.

(Some detail added.)

You can also access additional information via that page.


WCRB will transmit the concerts on air and over the web. The Friday and Saturday programs begin at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday's will be provided at 7:00 p.m. (all times EDT). The home page, in addition to the Listen Live button, has links to pages about these concerts and other programming on the station.

It looks like an enjoyable series of concerts.

Tanglewood — 2016/08/05-07

Friday, August 5.  Here's how the BSO's performance detail page — with its usual links — describes the program:

Costa Rican conductor  Giancarlo Guerrero  leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in two programs, August 5 and 6, both featuring world-class pianists. On Friday, August 5, at 8 p.m., Mr. Guerrero is joined by  Yefim Bronfman for Liszt's innovative and sparkling one-movement Piano Concerto No. 2. The program will also feature the BSO in Dvořák's Serenade for Winds, Britten's arrangement of Mahler's  What the Wild Flowers Tell Me (the original second movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 3), and Brahms' Serenade No. 2, which was dedicated to Clara Schumann and represents one of Brahms's various developmental steps in orchestral composition along his long path to completing his First Symphony.

(Some emphasis added and some changed.)

Regular readers may recall that I don't care for Brahms' symphonies and concertos. But several years ago James Levine led the orchestra in a performance of "Serenade № 2," and I found it delightful. More precisely, it was all pleasant enough, but the final section was a joy. The rest of the concert should be okay, although I don't really need to hear the Dvořák again, but it's not bad. I don't recall the Liszt concerto. It'll be interesting to hear what Britten does with the Mahler.

It's another of the unnecessary Underscore Fridays, but I'm actually looking forward to this one, partly because the last time some of the comments from the stage actually were worth hearing and more because I met Jamie Sommerville at a Harvard Musical Association concert and found him pleasant to talk to so I want to hear what he will say. Maybe he can even make the Dvořák interesting for me.


Saturday, August 6.  This time, the performance detail page says nothing about the pieces to be played, just about the change in scheduled artists:

Pianist Daniil Trifonov, who was scheduled to perform a recital on Thursday, August 4, and feature with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, August 6, has, with great regret, been forced to withdraw from these concerts due to an ear infection. Marc-André Hamelin replaces Mr. Trifonov for the recital at Ozawa Hall on August 4, and Ingrid Fliter performs as soloist in Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in her BSO and Tanglewood debuts on August 6. Changes have been made to the August 4 recital repertoire, while the August 6 program remains the same.

(Emphasis added.)

What is the unchanged program, you ask? Well, it opens with a piece titled Harmonienlehre, by John Adams. I recommend reading the program note linked on the detail page. It sounds fascinating. After intermission comes the Chopin, and the show wraps up with Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks by Strauss — another one of the pieces that this curmudgeon thinks is much overplayed, but at least doesn't need a lot of rehearsal time, and it's not too long. We had recordings of the Chopin piano concertos which got played fairly regularly when I was young — one much more than the other. I'm not sure which one this is, but I'm looking forward to hearing it anyway and maybe experiencing a bit of nostalgia for the younger days when I used to hear it occasionally. Again, the program note may be useful reading. All is once more under the baton of Maestro Guerrero. The program detail page also has the usual links to background information.


Sunday, August 7.  On Sunday, we get Mozart and Mahler, The program detail page informs us:

On Sunday, August 7, at 2:30 p.m., BSO assistant conductor  Moritz Gnann makes his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut at Tanglewood with works by Mozart and Mahler. Acclaimed Brazilian pianist  Nelson Freire joins Mr. Gnann and the orchestra for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9, considered the composer's first masterwork of the piano concerto genre, written in 1777 when he was just 21 years old. The program closes with Mahler's at times brooding, at times vigorously energetic Symphony No. 1. Completed when the composer was in his late twenties, it is in a four-movement, mostly traditional form, but already hints at the expansiveness and innovation of his later symphonies.

(Emphasis added or modified.)

I think both should be worth hearing


The Friday and Saturday concerts can be heard via WCRB radio or web at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time, and the Sunday program will be aired and streamed at 7:00, p.m. (not live at 2:30). Their home page, in addition to the link to listen over the web, gives information about other special programming which may be of interest. Their BSO page, in addition to brief descriptions of the Saturday and Sunday concerts, gives similar information about the remaining Tanglewood concert broadcasts and various other interesting items and links.

BSO — 2011/04/02

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.

Jean-Frédéric Neuburger

Last Friday evening M. Neuburger gave a concert at the Harvard Musical Association. He's about 22 years old and has been winning prizes as a pianist and organist for the past ten years. He gave a piano program of five pieces — Bach, Franck, Ravel, and 2 by Chopin. It was over an hour of music, and he did it all from memory. More importantly, he did it well. The audience applauded enthusiastically, and he gave an encore, by Debussy, also from memory.

So here's another name to look for in a concert hall near you.