BSO — 2024/01/13

 The BSO is back live with a concert I don't especially care about. WCRB gives us the essentials: https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2023-09-25/leons-stride-and-ravel-with-seong-jin-cho-and-the-bso

Saturday, January 13, 2024
8:00pm

Encore broadcast on Monday, January 22

Recent Pulitzer Prize winner and 2022 Kennedy Center honoree Tania León brings Strideto Symphony Hall, a piece inspired by Susan B. Anthony and the steps women continue to take towards equality. Award-winning pianist Seong-Jin Cho returns to perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, composed for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost an arm in World War I. The concert closes with one of the most influential pieces in history: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Seong-Jin Cho, piano

Tania LEÓN Stride 
Maurice RAVEL Piano Concerto for the left hand
Igor STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring

Watch Tania León describe the creative process behind Stride.

From NPR: Tania León Wins Music Pulitzer ForStride, Celebrating Women's Resilience.

To hear Seong-Jin Cho preview Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, use the player above, and read the transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT:

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Seong-Jin Cho

I'll listen to the first piece out of curiosity. As far as I'm concerned, the Concerto for the Left Hand is innocuous but nothing special, so I'll leave the radio on; but I don't like Rite of Spring, so I may well turn the radio off after intermission.

The BSO's performance detail page tells us:

Andris Nelsons, conductor 
Seong-Jin Cho, piano

Tania LEÓN Stride
RAVEL Piano Concerto for the left hand
Intermission
STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring

This week’s performances of Tania León Stride are supported in part by income from the Morton Margolis fund in the BSO’s endowment.
Thursday evening's performance by Seong-Jin Cho is supported by the Nathan R. Miller Family Guest Artist Fund.

Tania León’s Pulitzer Prize-winning piece Stride draws on her Cuban heritage and her long association with dance to create music rich with rhythmic vitality and scintillating instrumental colors. Superstar Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho plays Maurice Ravel’s dramatic Piano Concerto for the left hand, originally composed for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his arm during World War I. Closing the concert is and one of the most influential pieces in history: Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring, a work of primal power.

Program notes are there for each of the pieces.

So far, there is no review in the Intelligencer, but the Globe is very favorable, especially for the Ravel concerto.

Enjoy, if you listen.

BSO/Classical New England — 2023/06/17

 Another "blast from the past." WCRB has the basics on their page:

Saturday, June 17, 2023
8:00 PM 

Yo-Yo Ma returns to the Boston Symphony’s summer home as the soloist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, and Cristian Măcelaru conducts works by Debussy and Ensecu, as well as Anna Clyne’s “Masquerade.”

Cristian Măcelaru, conductor
Yo-Yo Ma, cello

Anna CLYNE Masquerade 
Edward ELGAR Cello Concerto
Claude DEBUSSY La Mer 
George ENESCU Romanian Rhapsody No. 1

This concert was originally broadcast on August 14, 2022 and is no longer available on demand.

For more details, check the BSO perforrmance detail page:

The Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser Concert

Romanian conductor Cristian Măcelaru, a 2010 Tanglewood Music Center Fellow, makes his BSO debut. Masquerade, by the U.S.-based English composer Anna Clyne, evokes the unique milieu of mid-18th-century London promenade concerts; this is the BSO’s first performance of Clyne’s music. Tanglewood favorite Yo-Yo Ma joins for Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, one of the English composer’s final works, in part a profoundly lyrical meditation on a world in turmoil after the devastation of World War I. Claude Debussy’s La Mer—a work given its American premiere by the BSO in 1907—is virtually a three-movement symphony miraculously depicting in music the changing states of the sea and sun over the course of a day. Closing the concert is Romanian composer Georges Enescu, one of the 20th-century’s greatest musicians. His familiar Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, based on his country’s folk music, is a delightful and finely wrought staple of Pops orchestras.

It's all fairly familiar except for the first piece. You can read about it in the program notes. The Globe review of the weekend has almost nothing to say about the Clyne piece, but is quite favorable to the concert.

It shoud lbe an enjoyable evening.

Classical New England — 2023/06/03

 This week's encore broadcast isn't a symphony concert but an an evening of chamber music from last summer at Tanglewood. Here's the description from WCRB:

Saturday, June 3, 2023
8:00 PM

Pianist Emanuel Ax anchors a celebration of Czech composers, including Dvorák, Janácek, and Kaprálová, with Yo-Yo Ma, Leonidas Kavakos, and Antoine Tamsetit, at Tanglewood.

Emanuel Ax, piano
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Antoine Tamestit, viola
Yo-Yo Ma, cello

Antonín DVOŘÁK Romantic Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 75
DVOŘÁK Gypsy Songs, Op. 55, Nos. 3-5, for viola and piano
Vítězslava KAPRÁLOVÁ Ritournelle, for cello and piano, Op. 25
Leoš JANÁČEK Fairy Tale, for cello and piano
DVOŘÁK Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat, Op. 87

This concert was originally broadcast on August 12, 2022 and is no longer available on demand.

It was given on a Friday evening, which is usually a time for an orchestral concert, but management has apparently decided they need to shake things up a bit. The performance detail page is still available with its link to full program note after this general description:

Pathways from Prague, Program 3

DVOŘÁK Romantic Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 75
DVOŘÁK Gypsy Songs, Op. 55, Nos. 3-5, for viola and piano
KAPRÁLOVÁ Ritournelle, for cello and piano, Op. 25
JANÁČEK Fairy Tale, for cello and piano
DVOŘÁK Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat, Op. 87 

Featuring three Tanglewood favorites and the Tanglewood debut of French violist Antoine Tamestit, this final concert of the Emanuel Ax-curated Pathways from Prague series explores chamber music by three Czech composers. Opening with rarely heard works for violin and piano and viola and piano by Antonín Dvořák, the concert closes with the composer’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, Op. 87, from 1889—one of his supreme achievements in chamber music. Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma play works for cello and piano by Leoš Janáček — his rhapsodic, three-movement Fairy Tale — and Vitěslava Kaprálová, who, though she died in 1940 at age 25, had an outsized impact on Czech music. Her brief, energetic Ritournelle, Op. 25, was among her last completed works.

---

Ticket includes admission to 6pm Prelude Concert.

Gates open at 5:30pm

Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 8:00pm EDT  (Past)

Pamela Frank has regrettably withdrawn from this concert due to health concerns. The program has been adjusted to accommodate a smaller ensemble.

The Intelligencer apparently didn't review the concert. As usual the Globe published a review of all three major weekend concerts, and the reviewer was very happy with this one.

I didn't write anything about it back then, but based on the description and the review, it sounds like a nice "chang of pace."

BSO/Classical New England — 2023/05/20

 Another Tanglewood concert is this evening's rebroadcast on WCRB:

Saturday, May 20, 2023
8:00 PM

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

This concert was originally broadcast on July 23, 2022 and is no longer available on demand.

This concert took place the day after the one they rebroadcast last week, so my comments from that weekend still apply, and the link to the BSO performance detail page still works. The portion of the Globe review of the weekend dealing with the Saturday concert is favorable, noting that it was a student orchestra, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. The reviewer singled out the principal trumpet and the principal horn for well played solos in the Mahler. Again, no review in the Intelligencer.

So it should be a good evening.

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.

BSO — 2013/02/28-03/02

This evening you can listen live or on March 10 to a rebroadcast/stream to a program of Hindemith, Rachmaninoff, and Bartók. The Boston Symphony's program details page gives the following details

With Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos on the podium, the sensational Chinese pianist Lang Lang makes his BSO debut in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. Two works tied to the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra bookend the program: Hindemith's Konzertmusik for Strings and Brass, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and the BSO on the occasion of the orchestra's 50th anniversary in 1931, and Bartók's ingeniously kaleidoscopic Concerto for Orchestra, a Koussevitzky commission premiered by the BSO in 1944. - See more at: http://www.bso.org/Performance/Detail/41088/#sthash.X57F6UJp.dpuf

and has links to background info as usual.

The Globe's reviewer found things to criticize in all three pieces, but thought that it wasn't all bad. Judge for yourself. I'm not familiar enough with any of them to say he's wrong, but I will say that the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra, a BSO specialty from the world premiere, sounded really good to me.

As usual, Classical New England will broadcast/stream this evening's concert at 8:00 (with preliminaries at 7:00) and repeat on March 10 (at 1:00 I expect). The CNE's BSO page gives links to interviews with conductor and soloist.

BSO — 2013/02/21-26

The BSO gives us the following description of this evening's program:

Veteran BSO conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos joins the BSO for two very different works for orchestra and voices: the complete music from Stravinsky's 1919 ballet Pulcinella-an early example, reinterpreting Baroque music, of the composer's neoclassical style, and named for a character from Italian commedia dell'arte-and Haydn's Mass in Time of War, composed in 1796 during the series of European wars following the French Revolution. These concerts feature the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, three soloists making return appearances at Symphony Hall-Alexandra Coku, Karen Cargill, and Matthew Polenzani-and, baritone soloist David Pittsinger.

Mr. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo is suffering from acute tracheitis and has been advised by his doctors to cancel all singing engagements for the next two weeks, including the BSO Stravinsky and Haydn performances of February 21, 22, 23 and 26.  We are grateful that David Pittsinger has agreed to join our vocal cast as baritone soloist for these performances on short notice.

See the program details page as well for program notes and audio previews (including an interview with the conductor) and biographies of the conductor and soloists available by clicking on their photos.

I was at the Thursday performance and enjoyed it a lot. The one "problem" is that several sections of "Pulcinella" are part of a suite, which has made them much more familiar that the rest of the piece. So there was a sort of inequality between the parts of the ballet. But if you're not familiar with the suite, this won't matter, and if you are, it's still worth hearing. Anyway, it was all good music and worth listening to. The reviewer for the Boston Musical Intelligencer felt that the music becomes increasingly less baroque and more Stravinsky-like as the piece goes on. I hadn't noticed that, but I'll be listening for it during the broadcast.

The Globe's reviewer found it basically good, but felt that Maestro Frühbeck let some details slip. I'm not enough of an expert to comment specifically on that. What I can say is that I have seen Maestro Frühbeck as guest conductor numerous times over the past half dozen years. This time I was shocked at how thin he was when he came out onto the stage. The use of a chair while he was conducting was a first. Obviously he has aged considerably. The though crossed my mind that he may be failing and these may be his last appearances with the Boston Symphony. I had forgotten that he is also conducting next week's concerts.

As usual, the concert is being broadcast and streamed live on Classical New England this evening at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time, with pre-concert features beginning at 7:00; and it will be rebroadcast/streamed on Sunday, March 3, probably at 1:00 p.m. See CNE's BSO page for scheduling info and links to interviews.  Tomorrows rebroadcast/stream will be last week's Mozart and Bruckner concert.

BSO — 2012/01/19-24 Info and Reviews

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.

Concert Season Begins; Good News for Europe

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.

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

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 — 2009/11/06

     Sorry for the short notice. Today, in just under 2 1/2 hours from when I'm posting this, they're doing the Beethoven 8th and 9th symphonies. I was at last night's performance and enjoyed it, although the Globe's reviewer didn't, largely because he doesn't like Lorin Maazel as a conductor. I'll post a link later.

     Also, a friendly B.C. grad student chatted with me during the intermission. Nice guy. Hope I'll see him again.

     I expect today's concert to be streamed on www.wgbh.org


     And here's the review from today's Boston Globe.

BSO — 2009/04/09-14 Edited: Review Added

This week's Boston Symphony Orchestra program, to be streamed over WGBH at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Friday, and WCRB at 8:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday will be:

Sibelius — "The Bard"

Grieg — Piano Concerto

Copland — Suite from "Appalachian Spring"

Bartók — Suite from "The Miraculous Mandarin"

conducted by BSO Assistant Conductor Shi-Yeon Sung, with Nelson Friere as soloist in the Grieg.

There was an article about the conductor in yesterday's Boston Herald. Last summer she conducted a BSO concert at Tanglewood. Here's a Boston Globe article about that and another concert the same weekend.

More information about the concert is available at the BSO website, including podcasts about the pieces, linked to the first page.

And here's the Globe's review.

BSO — 2009/03/26-28

Again I'm late with the announcement of this week's BSO concert.

They're giving
Ravel's Mother Goose Suite
Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto, with Lisa Batiashvili as the soloist
and after intermission
Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka (1911 version).

The conductor is Charles Dutoit.

I was there Thursday evening (only because it was part of my subscription series — none of it excites me) and I thought it was well played. But what do I know?

The Boston Globe's reviewer liked it.

The WGBH stream will begin in less than an hour and a half from the time I post this, and on Saturday at 8:00 Eastern Daylight Time, WCRB will stream it.

Comment on BSO — 2009/03/05

You gotta listen to this! The first part was really good. But after the intermission, the Ives symphony was spectacular. He has two different rhythms going in different parts of the orchestra at times, so that they need a second conductor. He takes familiar (to him at least) tunes and weaves them into this symphonic structure. The second movement is wild. The third and fourth are sublime. When it was over, the conductor held up his hand for a long time to prolong the silence into which the music had brought us. When he lowered his hand and one or two people had begun to clap, I shouted "bravo!" over the general quiet. Enthusiastic applause ensued, and eventually a standing ovation.

I urge everybody to get the program notes from www.bso.org and listen to either or both of the streamed broadcasts. And then if you're within striking distance of Symphony Hall, try to get a ticket for the final performance on next Tuesday, March 10.

I'll edit this to add the Boston Globe's review in the morning.

The Sibelius was pleasant, and the Rachmaninoff familiar and well done. But if you can only take time for the Ives, it will begin shortly after 2:45 on Friday, and 9:15 on Saturday.

Edited to add Boston Globe review:

Gilbert leads BSO in Ives's epic Fourth Symphony
By Jeremy Eichler
Globe Staff / March 6, 2009
Next fall the young conductor Alan Gilbert will be taking up the reins of the New York Philharmonic as its 25th music director and there are high hopes that he will bring that magnificent yet artistically staid orchestra a sense of freshness and new life. Focused yet unflashy on the podium, he is unquestionably a thoughtful musician with engaging ideas about the music of today and how it connects to the great masterpieces of the past. It should be fascinating to see if and how he can turn around the huge orchestral ship.

In the meantime, a bit of Gilbert's flair for programming with rich contrasts was on display last night in Symphony Hall, where he led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in three early-20th century works that were all written within 30 years of each other yet seemed to hail from completely different universes. The evening opened with an alluring performance of Sibelius's tone poem "Night Ride and Sunrise," yet the strongest contrast came with the final two works: Rachmaninoff's ubiquitous Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Ives's epic and rarely heard Fourth Symphony.

Rachmaninoff was ultimately a late-Romantic composer marooned in the 20th century. "I understand nothing of the music of today," he commented in 1933, the year before he wrote his Paganini Rhapsody. In some of its structural details you can feel Rachmaninoff working hard to sound innovative but his piece inevitably became best known for its moments of soaring lyricism and old-fashioned keyboard brilliance. The British pianist Stephen Hough last night gave it a supremely poised and thoughtful reading that did not shy away from the work's external glitter but also seemed determined to spotlight its textural subtleties and moments of quiet poetry. He did so extremely well.

Rachmaninoff once wrote that "a composer's music should express the country of his birth, his love affairs, his religion, the books which have influenced him, the pictures he loves. It should be the product of the sum total of a composer's experiences." Ironically, few pieces answer this call more fully than Ives's visionary Fourth Symphony, in which the composer seems to have united all of the disparate musical and biographical threads that run through his other works. It was written mostly between 1909 and 1911 and yet it is still a piece that sounds bracingly modern today.

It calls for chorus and massive orchestral forces which Gilbert managed artfully last night, with the aid of an assistant conductor (Andrew Grams) who helped the musicians navigate the multiple tempos. The work is a giant palimpsest with musical layers piled high on top of each other, at times building to a kind of glorious sonic anarchy. Gilbert chose a spacious pacing and found clarity and structure within the chaos. He drew a beautifully rich tone from the strings in the third movement fugue, and traced the broadest of arcs in the spiritually searching finale. At the very end, the music created just the desired effect: it seemed to evaporate into a clear night sky.