BSO — 2023/04/29

WCRB gives us the basics, along with access to an interview with the soloist:

Saturday, April 29, 2023
8:00 PM

Encore broadcast on Monday, May 8

Renowned South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho is the soloist in Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, and Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony in Caroline Shaw’s meditative Punctum and Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Seong-Jin Cho, piano

Caroline SHAW Punctum
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G
STRAVINSKY Petrushka (1947 version)

To hear a preview of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G with Seong-Jin Cho, use the player above, and read the transcript below:

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Seong-Jin Cho, the pianist who's back in Boston after a few years, it turns out that you were here in 2020, just before everything got locked down for the pandemic. Seong-Jin Cho, thank you so much for a little bit of your time today.

Seong-Jin Cho My pleasure. It's really great to be back

For more information, we can visit the BSO's performance detail page, and from there we can follow links to the program notes for each piece.

Acclaimed South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho returns to Symphony Hall for Maurice Ravel’s Concerto in G, one of the composer’s final works, which ranges from jazzy energy to poignant lyricism. Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw’s Punctum, is a meditation on a moment from J.S. Bach. Igor Stravinsky’s 1911 ballet Petrushka, the second of his great trilogy for the Ballets Russes company, depicts the hapless living puppet title character in gloriously scored scenes from a carnival fair.

Saturday evening’s performance by Seong-Jin Cho is supported by the Roberta M. Strang Memorial Fund.

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Andris Nelsons, conductor
Seong-Jin Cho, piano

Caroline SHAW Punctum
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G
Intermission
STRAVINSKY Petrushka (1947 version)

This wasn't part of my subscription, so I'll be hearing it for the first time along with you. Of course, I've heard the Ravel and Stravinsky on other occasions, and I can recommend them. As for "Punctum," I see it was premiered last summer on July 30 at Tanglewood, but I have no memory of it. The program note doesn't tell us a lot either. There is no review of this concert in either the Globe or the Intelligencer, but a Globe review from last summer has this to say:

Shaw describes her “Punctum,” originally a string quartet but presented on Saturday in a new incarnation for orchestra, as “an exercise in nostalgia” inspired by a moving passage from Roland Barthes’s “Camera Lucida,” in which the author finds a photo of his deceased mother as a child and discovers in its smallest details the essence of her entire adult being. “Punctum” was also inspired by Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” and Shaw plays ingeniously with the idea of tonal harmony as a kind of found object, a photograph of a loved one who has been lost, an artifact that may be savored on its own terms but cannot be separated from the ravages of time. Robust chords drift in and out of focus. Seemingly unified gestures are fractured over the orchestra as a whole. In order to actually see history, Barthes writes, we must stand apart from it. Shaw’s work seems by turns to flout and accentuate that distance from an idealized classical past.

It should be a good concert. Enjoy.

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?"