BSO — 2018/11/03

This evening a couple of "golden oldies" surround a piece which the BSO is giving its American premiere this week. On the orchestra's program detail page we read:

In this London-oriented program, Andris Nelsons leads the BSO in the American premiere of the first of several BSO co-commissions this season, English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage's Remembering: In Memoriam Evan Scofield. Evan, son of the great jazz guitarist and Turnage collaborator John Scofield, died of cancer at age twenty-five. The piece was co-commissioned by the BSO with the Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra. Opening the program is Haydn's Symphony No. 93, one of the first of the group of bold, innovative symphonies he wrote for performance in London during his visits there in the early 1790s. The English composer Edward Elgar's tour-de-force of orchestral and expressive imagination, the Enigma Variations, is a series of widely varied portraits of his friends via transformations of a common musical theme.

(Some emphasis added.)
The page also has the usual links to background material.

I was there for the first performance of the program on Thursday. I didn't notice anything spectacular in the playing of the Haydn or the Elgar, but they are enjoyable to listen to. At the end of the Turnage piece, the composer joined the conductor on stage after the initial bows, and I was part of the warm ovation for him. I like to applaud composers who produce listenable works. As the program notes point out, the work is in four parts. The first part struck me as jazzy. The second seemed noisy and cacophonous. If that had been the whole thing, I wouldn't have been so inclined to applaud the composer. The third part had both jazzy and noisy elements. In the last part, which was the first composed, we finally got calm and elegiac music such as one would expect in a piece expressing sorrow.

The review in the Globe is favorable (but not a rave) and gives an insight into the meaning of the first three parts of "Remembering." The Boston Musical Intelligencer's review, less encumbered than the Globe's by space limitations, is also favorable, with more detail.

So I definitely recommend listening over WCRB at 8:00 p.m. EDST this evening, November 3, and/or at 8:00 EST on Monday, Nov. 12. A second page on the station's website gives links to a conversation with composer Turnage and another, about the program, with Andris Nelsons.

Enjoy.

BSO — 2018/10/27

This week's concert begins with Lux Æterna, by Maija Einfelde, conducted by James Burton, the conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. That brief work is followed by Mahler's massive Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection," conducted by Music Director Andris Nelsons. The BSO's program detail page has the usual links to further information. It also has this blurb about the concert:

BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts Mahler's all-embracing ninety-minute Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, along with Chinese soprano Ying Fang and Argentine-born mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink. The fourth movement is a setting of "Urlicht," a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a source of texts for many of Mahler's songs, and the vast finale includes a setting for chorus and soprano of verses from Klopstock's poem "Resurrection." James Burton will conduct Maija's Einfelde's Lux aeterna, for mixed chorus, the first of two Latvian works performed this year to mark the centenary of the country's independence.

Reviews are in. The reviewer in the Globe gave a decidedly critical review of the performance of both works, but the reviewer for the Boston Musical Intelligencer was happy with the result. It wasn't part of my subscriptions, so I can't settle the disagreement.

You can hear the show beginning at 8:00 p.m., EDST, on air or on line via WCRB. If you have to listen to the Red Sox in Game 4 of the World Series at that time, you can catch the rebroadcast/stream on Monday, Nov. 5, also at 8:00 p.m.

BSO — 2018/10/20

This week we get a curtain-raiser by John Harbison, followed by two works by early 20th Century Russian composers. Here's the blurb from the orchestra's performance detail page:

BSO Associate Conductor Ken-David Masur is joined by outstanding American pianist Garrick Ohlsson for a work heard relatively rarely despite the popularity of its composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1. The early First Concerto exhibits the same spirit of Russian lyricism and virtuosity found in his perennially popular Second and Third concertos. Opening the program is John Harbison's Jazz Age-flavored foxtrot Remembering Gatsby, an orchestral work foreshadowing his acclaimed opera based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. This is one of several Harbison works this season celebrating the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston-based composer's 80th birthday year. Closing the program are excerpts from Prokofiev's ballet score Romeo and Juliet, which includes some of the composer's best-known music.

(Some emphasis added.)

I stayed home with a cold on Thursday evening, so I can't tell you anything about how they did. I have vague memories of a prior performance of "Remembering Gatsby," and it was okay. The Globe review praised Garrick Ohlsson's playing as "relaxed and almost contemplative no matter the tempo," and had no fault to find with any of the concert. The review in the Boston Musical Intelligencer seems to agree with the Globe about the playing of the Rachmaninoff — but with fancier vocabulary, The reviewer also finds little fault with anything else, giving a nice synopsis of the Harbison.

Well, the Harbison may not be to everyone's liking, but it's short; and it seems the rest is definitely worth hearing. You can listen in at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time over WCRB FM and on line. If you miss it this evening, there is the customary rebroadcast/stream on Monday, October 29 at 8:00, p.m. (Last Saturday's concert is similarly available this Monday, Oct. 22, at 8:00.)

Enjoy.

BSO — 2018/10/13

This week the Boston Symphony opens its/open their for my British readers 2018-2019 Symphony Hall season, so we will be able to hear a live concert from Symphony Hall. The orchestra's program detail page has links to their Media Center, audio previews of the concert, program notes from the program booklet, and a bio of the conductor (available by clicking on the thumbnail picture. It also gives this description of the concert (annoyingly listing the works out of the order in which they will be performed):

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra-a work commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and premiered by the BSO in 1944-anchors this season-opening program highlighting the virtuosity of the orchestra's string, woodwind, brass, and percussion sections. Acclaimed Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, making his BSO debut, conducts that work, as well as Stravinsky's piquant Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings.

(Emphasis added.)

The synopsis is inaccurate in one detail. The strings played the Tchaikovsky without a conductor on Thursday, and the program booklet indicates that it was planned to be without conductor on Friday and Saturday, as well.

I have seen three reviews of the Thursday performance: one in the Boston Classical Review, one in the Boston Globe, and one in the Boston Musical Intelligencer. The Classical Review liked the playing of the Stravinsky and Bartók, but the Tchaikovsky not so much. For the Globe, it was all good. The reviewer in the Intelligencer found the Tchaikovsky transformed into a "stone sculpture," was unhappy with how they did the Stravinsky, and was scathing about the performance of the Bartók. If you're familiar with the music, you can decide whose take agrees with yours.

I was there on Thursday and thought the Stravinsky (new to me) was unpleasant, the Tchaikovsky unremarkable, and the Bartók tolerable apart from the brass screams. I'm not enough of a musician to judge the reviewers' takes on how the music was performed. As far as I could tell, they were doing it competently.  But to my tastes, none of it was "must listening," and I'll probably pass up the chance to hear it again so I can listen to the Red Sox game. OTOH, if you're not a Sox fan, you'll probably enjoy the Tchaikovsky and some of the gentler parts of the Bartók.

As always, the show begins at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time (EDST) and can be heard on air or on line via WCRB. You might want to check out other pages on their website and see what else they offer.

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/10/06

This evening's concert is unusual in that it was originally performed on the afternoon of May 4, 2018, which was a Friday, but not at any other time that week. There was an all-Brahms program on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. So this concert wasn't broadcast when it was given, and I haven't heard it in person either., meaning that I haven't previously posted about it. Here's the description from the BSO's performance detail page:

BSO Assistant Conductor Moritz Gnann leads this single Friday-afternoon program, which features principal oboe John Ferrillo in the Oboe Concerto of Alessandro Marcello, a slightly older contemporary of his fellow Venetian Antonio Vivaldi. Opening the program is a group of canzonas by the earlier Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli, who was active in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Completing the first half of this program is a wind-ensemble arrangement of numbers from Rossini's delightful and familiar 19th-century comic opera The Barber of Seville. Mozart's G minor symphony, No. 40, is among the most enduringly popular of all thecomposer's works.

(Some emphasis added.)

The Globe seems not to have reviewed it, but the Boston Musical Intelligencer has this review by its publisher. Basically, he enjoyed the first half, but was disappointed in the second. (So I won't mind too much when my brother's weekly call from Japan interrupts my listening.)

Hear it all over WCRB at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time (i.e., EDST).

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/09/29

This week, as we look forward to the return of the BSO for the 2018-19 season (with the first Saturday concert on October 13), WCRB will rebroadcast and stream the concert of March 11, 2017. I hadn't heard it previously, but I posted about it at the time, and you can check out the links there, including a review. The performance detail page described it as follows:

Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo and Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein return to Symphony Hall, joining the BSO and the men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for the visionary Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni's monumental Piano Concerto, a fascinating but rarely heard work of Mahlerian scope dating from the first years of the 20th century. These are the first BSO performances. (Future BSO conductor Karl Muck led the premiere in Berlin in 1904.) Opening the program is a very different sort of piece from the same era, Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 3, a sunny, open work with numerous touches of folk-music simplicity.

(Emphasis added.)

As at the time, I still think it's well worth listening to, 8:00 p.m., EDST, September 29.

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/09/22

This week's rebroadcast on WCRB is the concert of February 25, 2017: a triple concerto by Sofia Gubaidulina which was receiving its premiere performances and Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony. I wrote about it at the time and, as you can see, thought it was good. The synopsis on the orchestra's performance detail page is as follows:

The Russian-born Sofia Gubaidulina, acclaimed as one of the most significant composers in the world today, was encouraged in her career early on by Dmitri Shostakovich. She wrote her Triple Concerto (a BSO co-commission receiving its world premiere at these concerts) for the unusual combination of violin, cello, and bayan, a type of accordion often employed by Gubaidulina and a mainstay of Russian folk music. Joining Latvian violinist Baiba Skride are Dutch cellist Harriet Krijgh and Swiss bayanist Elsbeth Moser, both making their BSO debuts. Shostakovich wrote his Seventh Symphony, Leningrad, as a tribute to the peoples' fortitude in the face of the German Army's long and destructive siege of that city during World War II. Serge Koussevitzky led the first U.S. concert performances of the piece with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in August 1942, following the NBC Symphony's radio broadcast premiere under Toscanini the previous month. The present performances continue Andris Nelsons' and the BSO's survey of the complete Shostakovich symphonies, which are being recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.

(Some emphasis added.)

I'll be in Boston this evening attending Odyssey Opera's performance of "La reine de Saba" by Gounod. If you can't be there, I think this concert will be worth (re)hearing this evening at 8:00 EDST.

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/09/15

This week WCRB gives us a rebroadcast/stream of the concert of February 18, 2017. The BSO's program description page at the time had this to say:

Andris Nelsons and Emanuel Ax team up for one of the pianist's favorites, Mozart's gregarious, large-scale Piano Concerto in E-flat, K.482, composed in late 1785 when Mozart was also working on his comic opera The Marriage of Figaro. The American composer Gunther Schuller wrote his kaleidoscopic Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee in 1959. Each of its movements is based on a different Klee work, inspiring from the composer a wealth of styles ranging from the blues to mysterious modernism. Closing the program is Beethoven's revolutionary Symphony No. 3,Eroica, which radically expanded the boundaries of the symphonic genre.

(Some emphasis added.)

I wrote about it at the time (with links to reviews) and found it all worth listening to, even the Schuller. The link to the gallery of Klee paintings may not be working in my post, so here it is again. So enjoy this evening at 8:00, Boston Time.

BSO/Classical New England — 2018/09/08

There is always a hiatus between the Tanglewood season and the Symphony Hall Season of the Boston Symphony. At this point, the orchestra is on a European tour. Meanwhile, WCRB is resuming their custom of rebroadcasting and streaming recent concerts. This month they are giving us concerts from 2017. This week it is the concert of February 11, 2017. I wrote about it at the time. Here's the synopsis from the program detail page:

Andris Nelsons is joined by countertenor Bejun Mehta and the Boston-based Lorelei Ensemble in the BSO's first performances of esteemed English composer George Benjamin's Dream of the Song, commissioned by the BSO for the 75th anniversary of the Tanglewood Music Center. Opening the program is Ravel's colorful orchestral version of his solo piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, inspired in part by the French Baroque composer François Couperin. Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, his first masterpiece, is innovative in form, remarkably forward-thinking in its use of the orchestra, and quintessentially Romantic in its depiction of an artist's unrequited love.

(Some emphasis added.)

The Ravel and Berlioz are standards of the repertoire and should be good. I don't recall the Benjamin piece. The program notes give some idea of what to expect, if you don't want to just experience it as something new.

As usual, the show begins at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time.

WCRB — 2018/09/01

There is no listing at WCRB for any Boston Symphony concert this evening. I don't know if somebody missed the date when putting together the schedule for the weeks between Tanglewood and the opening of the season at Symphony Hall, or if the gap is deliberate. But there you have it. Concert rebroadcasts resume next week.