BSO/Classical New England — 2021/08/21

 As I noted last week, this year's Tanglewood season didn't end with the usual performancve of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. So WCRB has decided to use the first "gap weekend" until Symphony Hall concerts resume by rebroadcasting the closer from 2019. Here's what they tell us:

In an encore broadcast of the final concert of the 2019 Tanglewood season, Giancarlo Guerrero conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Schoenberg's "Peace on Earth" and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the "Ode to Joy," Saturday at 8pm.

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
Nicole Cabell, soprano
J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano
Nicholas Phan, tenor
Morris Robinson, bass
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
James Burton, conductor

SCHOENBERG Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth), for unaccompanied chorus
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9

This concert was originally broadcast on August 25, 2019

In the audio player above: Giancarlo Guerrero describes his experiences at Tanglewood this summer and why this performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony carries extra significance.

TRANSCRIPT:

If you go to the web page which I have linked, you can listen to the audio of the interview or read the transcript. And here's what we find on the performance detail page:

With vocal soloists Nicole Cabell, J’Nai Bridges, Nicholas Phan, and Morris Robinson and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, returning guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero leads the BSO in the orchestra’s traditional season-ending performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Sunday, August 25. The concert opens with Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth) for unaccompanied chorus, also featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden will be conducted by James Burton.

(Most emphasis added.)

A lengthy review of the whole weekend in the Globe finally got around to a few tepid words about the Beethoven with a bit of criticism of the tempo (too fast at one point). The Intelligencer doesn't seem to have published a review.

Well, the Beethoven Ninth isn't half bad, so why not listen this evening at 8:00?

BSO — 2019/11/02

Tonight we get to hear two orchestras for the price of one as the GHO (Gewandhausorchester Leipzig) joins the BSO for the final concert of "Leipzig Week in Boston." Here's the blurb from the performance detail page:

To conclude “Leipzig Week in Boston,” an intermixed orchestra of BSO and Gewandhausorchester members plays three concerts under Andris Nelsons’ direction. Haydn’s 1792 Sinfonia concertante—here featuring soloists from both the BSO and the GHO—was written during the first of the composer’s wildly successful visits to England, for which he also wrote the twelve “London” symphonies. Richard Strauss’ Festive Prelude for organ and orchestra, featuring French organist Olivier Latry as soloist, was written for the opening of Vienna’s Konzerthaus in 1913; its only BSO performances were later that same year. The organ also has a major role in the Russian composer and mystic Alexander Scriabin’s lushly exotic Poem of Ecstasy (1908), which features kaleidoscopic orchestral effects and rich, post-Romantic harmonies. Completing the program is Schoenberg’s intoxicating Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”) for strings, an 1899 tone poem considered to be the composer’s first masterpiece.

(Some emphasis added.)

Maestro Nelsons has the clout to bring this collaboration about since he is Kapellmeister of the GHO as well as Music Director of the BSO.

The Thursday concert wasn't part of my subscription, so I'm looking forward to hearing it for the first time this evening. I have heard the Scriabin and Schoenberg pieces before and I'd say they're okay. The first half of the concert will be new to me, and I expect it to be good.

The review in the Globe is definitely mixed. The reviewer finds combining the two orchestras less than a complete success (not saying anything was actually bad), although he found the Haydn good. The Boston Musical Intelligencer hasn't yet posted a review of this concert.

You can check out the links on the performance detail page as well as on WCRB's website.

And as always, you can hear it on air or over the web via WCRB tonight or November 11 at 8:00 p.m.

Enjoy!

Tanglewood — 2019/08/23-25

This weekend is the end of the BSO's season at Tanglewood. It has become the tradition to close on Sunday with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. They could certainly do worse.


Friday, August 23, 2019.  The program presents more or less familiar music with two musicians who are new to me and, I suppose, most audiences. The BSO performance detail page explains:

BSO Assistant Conductor Yu-An Chang makes his BSO debut on Friday, August 23, leading Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Schubert’s Symphony No. 2, and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, featuring Conrad Tao. 

 

Pianist Ingrid Fliter had been scheduled to perform Ravel's Piano Concerto in G with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Friday, August 23 at the Koussevitzky Music Shed. Replacing Ms. Fliter in the Ravel concerto will be Conrad Tao who will make his Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood debuts. There are no other changes to the program.

(Some emphasis added.) 
Ravel isn't my favorite composer, but not too tough to take, so this concert should be a good one. It should be a comfortable debut for the new conductor.


Saturday, August 24, 2019.  The BSO takes the evening off, but many of its members (other than section principals) are also members of the Boston Pops and will be performing as such. The performance detail page tells us:

Long established as one of Tanglewood’s most anticipated and beloved evenings, John Williams’ Film Night returns on Saturday, August 24, with George and Roberta Berry Boston Pops Conductor Laureate John Williams introducing the festive evening, which features the Boston Pops and conductor David Newman performing a program celebrating the music of Hollywood and more.

(Some emphasis added.)

Film buffs and Williams fans will especially enjoy this one.


Sunday, August 24, 2019.  Not only is the Beethoven Ninth the season closer, in recent years, it has also been the custom to preceded it with another, much briefer, piece. This year the opener is a choral work by Schoenberg. The performance detail page gives a link to the program notes, which make the connection to the "Ode for Joy" clear. We also have this overall synopsis:

With vocal soloists Nicole Cabell, J’Nai Bridges, Nicholas Phan, and Morris Robinson and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, returning guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero leads the BSO in the orchestra’s traditional season-ending performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Sunday, August 25. The concert opens with Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth) for unaccompanied chorus, also featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden will be conducted by James Burton.

(Some emphasis added.)


Listen to it all over the facilities of WCRB* at 8:00 p.m. EDST on Friday and Saturday and 7:00 p.m. on Sunday. It should be a good series of concerts.

* I can't get the WCRB website to open for me to provide the link, but you can find it in any of my earlier posts about BSO concerts.

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

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.