BSO — 2024/03/09

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

Saturday, March 9, 2024
8:00pm

Encore broadcast on Monday, March 18

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

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

Edvard GRIEG Peer Gynt

For notes and a synopsis, visit the BSO.

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

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

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

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

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

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

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

Please note that there is no intermission in these concerts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/08/01

This evening we get an encore broadcast of the Tanglewood concert given on Friday July 12, 2019. I must have been away, because i didn't post about it at the time.

The orchestra's performance detail page has the usual links to notes and performer bios, as well as the following brief synopsis:

BSO principal trumpet Thomas Rolfs and English horn player Robert Sheena join Andris Nelsons and the orchestra for the opening work on the July 12 program, Copland’s Quiet City, followed by a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Jan Lisiecki in his Tanglewood debut and ending with Copland’s Symphony No. 3.

(Some emphasis added.)

WCRB has taken to playing "Quiet City" fairly frequently during late evenings. It's a pleasant enough piece which I think lives up to its name. I'm not familiar enough with the other pieces to offer a solid opinion, but I think they're both okay.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer's review is brief but highly favorable all around. The Globe's review (which starts with the Verdi Requiem given on Saturday) found no fault with the Copland, but was not satisfied with Lisiecki's playing of the Grieg.

IMO this is a concert worth listening to. I'll be tuned in to WCRB from 8:00 until my brother calls from Japan.

BSO/Classical New England — 2020/06/20

WCRB continues to scroll through last season's concerts. This week it's the concert from November 16. Herewith, my take on it back then:

This week's concert is pleasant enough. As the performance detail page informs us:

Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes joins Andris Nelsons and the BSO for his countryman Edvard Grieg’s powerful Piano Concerto, a staple of the virtuoso repertoire. Austrian soprano Genia Kühmeier makes her BSO debut as soloist in the last movement of Mahler’s sunlit, expansive Symphony No. 4, completed in 1900. The Fourth is the last of the composer’s three Wunderhornsymphonies, which feature vocal settings of texts from the folk-poem collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a preoccupation of Mahler’s for more than a decade. The final movement is an expansion of his 1892 song “Das himmlische Leben” (“Heavenly Life”).

(Some emphasis added.)

So far, there is no review in the Intelligencer.  The one in the Globe is generally quite favorable, especially for the Grieg. [A review appeared in the Intelligencer after I posted. The reviewer was quite pleased with the Grieg. He thought the first movement of the Mahler was badly conducted, but the rest was better.] I was there on Thursday, and was quite satisfied.

So give it a listen over WCRB tonight … at 8:00 p.m., EST. I think you'll like what you hear.

And don't forget the links available on both the WCRB and BSO websites.

All in all, it should be pretty enjoyable.

BSO — 2019/11/16

This week's concert is pleasant enough. As the performance detail page informs us:

Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes joins Andris Nelsons and the BSO for his countryman Edvard Grieg’s powerful Piano Concerto, a staple of the virtuoso repertoire. Austrian soprano Genia Kühmeier makes her BSO debut as soloist in the last movement of Mahler’s sunlit, expansive Symphony No. 4, completed in 1900. The Fourth is the last of the composer’s three Wunderhornsymphonies, which feature vocal settings of texts from the folk-poem collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a preoccupation of Mahler’s for more than a decade. The final movement is an expansion of his 1892 song “Das himmlische Leben” (“Heavenly Life”).

(Some emphasis added.)

So far, there is no review in the Intelligencer.  The one in the Globe is generally quite favorable, especially for the Grieg. I was there on Thursday, and was quite satisfied.

So give it a listen over WCRB tonight and/or Monday, November 25. Both shows start at 8:00 p.m., EST. I think you'll like what you hear.

And don't forget the links available on both the WCRB and BSO websites.

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/06/09

This week, as the hiatus between the Symphony Hall and Tanglewood season continues, WCRB's encore broadcast is of the October 21, 2017, concert. I posted about it at the time. Subsequently a fairly lengthy review appeared in the Boston Musical Intelligencer. The reviewer describes the performance in some detail. So with that and the other material linked in my post, you should have a good idea of what it's all about. It looks like a good chance to have some context for the music. The program begins at the regular time, 8:00 p.m., EDST.

You might also want to check out some of the links on the WCRB website to other programming and features.

BSO — 2017/10/21

This week, it's "incidental music" — music written to go with plays — at the BSO. It's not part of my subscription so I haven't heard it and can't comment on the performance. Also, as of this writing, no review has appeared in the Boston Musical Intelligencer. But the orchestra's performance detail page gives — in addition to all the usual links to further information — the following description:

Bill Barclay and his creative team return to join BSO Associate Conductor Ken-David Masur for an imaginative treatment of Grieg's music for Ibsen's fantastical folk-play Peer Gynt. Rough and rustic, negligent and occasionally criminal, Peer Gynt undergoes many adventures-among them kidnapping his erstwhile fiancée, encountering the Mountain King and begetting a son by the king's daughter, traveling in North Africa, and sidestepping the Devil. Opening the program is Beethoven's incidental music for Goethe's tragedy Egmont, featuring soprano and narrator along with the orchestra, and best-known for its overture, which is frequently heard on its own. The play tells of the Flemish Count Egmont's refusal to relinquish his ideal of freedom in his struggle against the tyrannical Duke of Alba.

(Some emphasis added.)

The Globe review is mixed. Of course, you won't be able to see the action on stage, but you can hear the music, and whatever spoken words are part of the show.

Listen over WCRB tonight at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time (with a rebroadcast scheduled on Monday, October 30)., and see how well the music does on its own. Some of it has been in the standard repertory since it was composed. Check out the rest of the station's offerings through the links on their home page. On Monday, October 23 at 8:00 you'll have your chance to listen again to last week's concert of Ligeti, Dvořák, and Schumann.

Happy Listening!

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.

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.