Tanglewood — 2024/07/05-07

 The BSO is back live at Tanglewood this weekend and WCRB is bringing us the concerts from the Music Shed as in previous years. Here's what we have to look forward to this weekend.

Here's WCRB's synopsis of tonight's concert:

Friday, July 5, 2024
8:00 PM

The 2024 Tanglewood season kicks off with a romantic tour de force: an all-Beethoven program headlined by violinist Gil Shaham in the composer’s Violin Concerto. Andris Nelsons also leads the BSO in the Symphony No. 3, the “Eroica” Symphony, an emotionally expansive piece that redefined what a symphony was by transforming the heroic journey into symphonic form.

Andris Nelsons, conductor 
Gil Shaham, violin

ALL-BEETHOVEN program
Violin Concerto
Symphony No. 3 Eroica

Clearly, this is a program worth hearing. I'll listen to this rather than the Red Sox game.

Tomorrow it will be the Boston Pops, rather than the BSO. Of course, there is considerable overlap in the rosters of the organizations. WCRB tells us:

Saturday, July 6, 2024
8:00 PM

Keith Lockhart leads the Pops and a cast of Broadway superstars in selections from such Tony-winning musicals as Hamilton, In the Heights, The Light in the Piazza, Kimberly Akimbo, A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder, The Band's Visit, and Dear Evan Hansen.

Boston Pops Orchestra
Keith Lockhart, conductor
Victoria Clark
Mandy Gonzalez
Joshua Henry
Darius de Haas
Bryce Pinkham
Scarlett Strallen
Jason Danieley, director
Georgia Stitt, music supervisor

Broadway Today!: Broadway’s Modern Masters

I'm not familiar with this music. Doubtless it will be very good, but I just might listen to the Sox instead.

On Sunday we get an "encore broadcast," described as follows by our friends at WCRB:

Sunday, July 7, 2024
7:00 PM

Christina and Michelle Naughton are the soloists in Poulenc’s firecracker Concerto for Two Pianos, and Earl Lee leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and “Pulse,” by Brian Raphael Nabors.

Earl Lee, conductor
Christina and Michelle Naughton, pianos

Brian Raphael NABORS Pulse
Francis POULENC Concerto in D minor for two pianos and orchestra
Felix MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3, Scottish

This concert was originally broadcast on August 5, 2022 and is no longer available on demand.

Hear an interview with Christina and Michelle Naughton, recorded at Symphony Hall in October 2021. https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2021-10-05/twin-dynamism-with-the-naughton-sisters

For more information on Tanglewood concerts, visit the BSO box office.

This is a bit of a surprise, since there is a live concert (all Strauss) on Sunday afternoon with the BSO and Renee Fleming under the baton of Andris Nelsons. But the rebroadcast should be good. For whatever reason, WCRB isn't telling us yet what they plan to do next week. While they play it close to the vest, we'll just have to wait and see if this is going to be normal operating procedure (I hope not.) or what our British cousins call a one off.

At any rste they're following their pattern from past years of broadcasting the Friday and Saturday concerts live at 8:00 p.m. and delaying the 2:30 Sunday concert to 7:00 p.m. Lenox Time.

BSO/Classical New England — 2023/05/27

 While we await the opening of the BSO 2023 season at Tanglewood, WCRB continues with encore broadcasts from Tanglewood 2022. https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2022-06-13/twin-vivacity-with-the-naughtons-at-tanglewood

Saturday, May 27, 2023
8:00 PM

Christina and Michelle Naughton are the soloists in Poulenc’s firecracker Concerto for Two Pianos, and Earl Lee leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and “Pulse,” by Brian Raphael Nabors.

Earl Lee, conductor
Christina and Michelle Naughton, pianos

Brian Raphael NABORS Pulse
Francis POULENC Concerto in D minor for two pianos and orchestra
Felix MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3, Scottish

This concert was originally broadcast on August 5, 2022 and is no longer available on demand.

Hear an interview with Christina and Michelle Naughton, recorded at Symphony Hall in October 2021.

I was coming home from my visit to PEI so I didn't post about the concert last August 5, although I did post about the Saturday and Sunday concerts that weekend. Here's a link to the BSO performance detail page, which has the usual links to program notes etc. and synopsizes the show as follows:

BSO Assistant Conductor Earl Lee makes his BSO debut, joined by the virtuosic piano duo of twins Christina and Michelle Naughton in their Tanglewood debuts performing Francis Poulenc’s impish neoclassical Concerto for Two Pianos. American composer Brian Raphael Nabors’ exciting and rhapsodic Pulse reflects on the varieties of experience that we might encounter every day. Felix Mendelssohn found inspiration for his intensely Romantic Symphony No. 3 on a trip to Scotland in 1829. Composed a decade later, it was his last completed symphony.

The review in the Intelligencer mistakenly attributes the concert to Saturday evening. It describes the Nabors and Poulenc pieces more than speaking about the quality of the performance, The reviewer was unenthusiastic about how the Mendelssohn was played. The Globe review of the weekend was happier.

All in all, it seems worth listening to.

BSO/Classical New England — 2022/09/17

 This is the last week of rebroadcasts before the Symphony Hall season begins. Here's WCRB's synopsis of this concert:

Saturday, September 17, 2022
8:00 PM

In her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut, conductor Elim Chan leads a pair of powerhouse works in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 and Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with soloist Igor Levit.

Elim Chan, conductor
Igor Levit, piano

Johannes BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2
Brian Raphael NABORS Pulse
Piotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 2

This concert is no longer available on demand.

Concert originally broadcast live from Symphony Hall in Saturday, January 22, 2022.

To hear conductor Elim Chan previews the program, describes the spark of her conducting career while a student at Smith College, and her work with conductor Bernard Haitink, click on the link above.

Transcript:

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Elim Chan, who's here with the Boston Symphony, leading the orchestra for the very first time. Elim, thanks so much for your

For whatever reason (I can't remember it at the moment) I didn't post about the concert when it was happening. The concert was favorably reviewed in the Globe and glowingly and with much detail in the Intelligencer.

It should be enjoyable listening this evening at 8:00, Boston Time.

Tanglewood — 2022/07/30-31

 My apologies for not posting yesterday. For me this was going to be the highlight weekend of the summer: all five Beethoven piano concertod performed over the course of the three concerts. But then I was so distracted by serving on the Race Committee yeaterday, the Red Sox game in the evening and preparations for a trip that I never thought of Tanglewood until after the game was over, and I said to myself, "Darn! I forgot to lidten to the Tanglewood concert." In addition to the Beethoven, they are giving performances of works by women composers to open each program. On Friday, the Beethoven was Concertos Nos. 2 and 3. I'm sorry to have missed them and sorry not to have called your attention to them.

Saturday, July 30, 2022. Here's WCRB's synopsis:

Saturday, July 30, 2022
8:00 PM

Tonight at 8, Paul Lewis is the soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 4, and Andris Nelsons leads the world premiere of the orchestral version of Caroline Shaw’s “Punctum.”

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Paul Lewis, piano

Caroline SHAW Punctum (world premiere of orchestral version; BSO commission)
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4

For further information, including links to the program notes, see the BSO performance detail page. They summarize it with the following blurb:

Andris Nelsons and English pianist Paul Lewis collaborate on the second of three concerts encompassing all five of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano concertos in one weekend. Each of these concerts opens with a BSO co-commissioned piece by an American woman. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw’s Punctum, originally for string quartet, is a meditation on a brief moment in J.S. Bach’s St. MatthewPassion. Beethoven’s First Concerto (actually composed later than No. 2) is strongly anchored in the Viennese Classicism of Wolfgang Mozart and Joseph Haydn. The Fourth Concerto, written at the same time as Beethoven’s opera Leonore, is in the composer’s warm, lyrical style, but also makes room for brilliant virtuosity.

I can't tell you anything about "punctum," but the program notes will. Of course, the piano concertos are well worth hearing.

Sunday, July 31, 2022. Sunday at 7:00 p.m we get the following, as WCRB tells us:

Sunday, July 31, 2022
7:00 PM (delayed broadcast of 2:30 PM concert)

Sunday at 7pm, Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony in the world premiere of "Starling Variations," by Elizabeth Ogonek, as well as Farrenc’s Symphony No. 3 and Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, with soloist Paul Lewis.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Paul Lewis, piano

Elizabeth OGONEK Starling Variations (world premiere; BSO co-commission)
Louise FARRENC Symphony No. 3
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor 

Further information, including links to the program notes, can be found at the orchestra's performance detail page:

Andris Nelsons and English pianist Paul Lewis collaborate on the third of three concerts encompassing all five of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano concertos in one weekend. Each of these concerts opens with a BSO co-commissioned piece by an American woman. Elizabeth Ogonek was a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow in 2012. She has been a composer in residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and has also been commissioned by the BBC, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the London Symphony Orchestra. The French composer Louise Farrenc was one of the most accomplished musicians of the early Romantic era—an outstanding pianist, composer, and teacher. She wrote her Third Symphony in 1847. Completed in 1811, Beethoven’s Emperor was his final concerto, a work perfectly balancing virtuosity with substance and depth and epitomizing the composer’s “heroic” period.

I'm sure I'm not alone in considering the "Emperor" (a name not given to it by Beethoven, but still fitting) the greatest piano concerto of all time. My freshman college roommate had a recording of it which he played every Sunday. I never got tired of it.

I won't be able to post next Friday, so here's WCRB's scoop on August 5, 2022.

Friday, August 5, 2022
8:00 PM

Friday at 8pm, Christina and Michelle Naughton are the soloists in Poulenc’s firecracker Concerto for Two Pianos, and Earl Lee leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony and “Pulse,” by Brian Raphael Nabors.

Earl Lee, conductor
Christina and Michelle Naughton, pianos

Brian Raphael NABORS Pulse
Francis POULENC Concerto in D minor for two pianos and orchestra
Felix MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3, Scottish 

The BSO adds:

BSO Assistant Conductor Earl Lee makes his BSO debut, joined by the virtuosic piano duo of twins Christina and Michelle Naughton in their Tanglewood debuts performing Francis Poulenc’s impish neoclassical Concerto for Two Pianos. American composer Brian Raphael Nabors’ exciting and rhapsodic Pulse reflects on the varieties of experience that we might encounter every day. Felix Mendelssohn found inspiration for his intensely Romantic Symphony No. 3 on a trip to Scotland in 1829. Composed a decade later, it was his last completed symphony.

While it's not at the pinnacle of Beethoven, the Mendelsohn symphony is quite good, IMO. The BSO gave a performance of the Poulenc concerto with the Jussen brothers on piano in September 2019. At the time I wrote, "The Poulenc concerto was enjoyable to listen to. Unfortunately over the radio you probably won't be able to tell which one is playing — which was a good part of the enjoyment — but it should be okay as a strictly aural experience." For information about "Pulse," I refer you to the program notes via the link on the performance detail page for next Friday"

So I recommend it overall, even though I can't say more about "Pulse" than, "Why not give it a try?"