Symphony Hall,
Boston. Second Balcony (Section 28C,
Seat D2, $66.)
Program
“Divisions” for
Orchestra (2014) by Sebastian Currier (b. 1959).
Piano Concerto
No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 (premiere 1803), by Beethoven (1770-1827).
Symphony No. 2
in D, Op. 73 (1877), by Brahms (1833-1897).
We are visiting
the Boston area for the long weekend.
There were not too many tickets left at 7 pm, when we got to Symphony
Hall. We decided to pass on the $145
prime seats, and opted for these $66 tickets instead. Seats 1 and 2 are at the end of the center
row, with the right side of the stage (cellos and basses, mostly) blocked. We managed to shift into two vacant seats
towards the center, and that made a big difference. Symphony Hall reminds me of the great
European concert halls I have been too, with great acoustics, but there are too
many seats that would require a lot of leaning forward or sideways to get a
good view of the stage.
Let me jump to
the conclusion right away: this was a great concert.
My appreciation
started with the first piece, a modern composition written to commemorate the
start of the first world war. A group of
orchestras (BSO among them) commissioned ten different works for this purpose,
and this is the last of the ten to be performed.
With most modern
pieces, the best conclusion I can draw is “I may enjoy it more if I get to
listen to it more often.” Here my
appreciation is immediate. The composition
is unmistakably modern, but it had a structure that was easy to grasp, and
conveyed the message readily. I quote
from the composer: “My starting point was the rather obvious observation that
we humans are a jumble of contradictory impulses: at our best so creative,
insightful, and altruistic, at our worst so inexplicably short-sighted,
destructive, and sadistic.” The
construction of the piece is more complicated than that, and to get how the
piece actually progresses would take multiple listenings, at least in my case. Yet it was easy to like.
The way the orchestra
started the Beethoven piece really justified their reputation as an
organization that plays with great precision.
With the great acoustics of the hall, the phrase “wow, this is clean”
readily came to mind. That set the tone for
the entire performance. With the
exception of a few places where the piano was a bit too soft, it was a
performance worthy of an engineered CD recording. The sound was warm without being sugary, and
the interpretation thoughtful without being too emotional. As with familiar
pieces, I have in my mind how a great performance would be like, and this one
met and often exceeded my expectations.
The three movements are Allegro con brio, Largo, and Rondo: Allegro.
Paul Lewis was
the soloist already scheduled, but had to withdraw because of an “unanticipated
surgical procedure.” I had heard him a
couple of times in New York, and Lars Vogt once this summer. From what I can recall from those
performances, the substitution is not a downgrade at all. The audience rewarded the performance with a
warm applause.
Brahms’s second
symphony is a concert staple, and I have been quite familiar with it since my
college days. This is a symphony that’s
easy to get musically, even though the Program Notes calls it “perhaps the most
regularly misread of Brahms’s major works.”
The ambiguity starts with Brahms’s own descriptions of this work: to his
friend Eduard Hanslick he wrote “It’ll sound so cheerful and lovely …,” but to
Clara Schumann he described it as “elegiac.”
The symphony comprises of four movements: Allegro non troppo, Adagio non
troppo, Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino), and Allegro con spirito.
The other “characteristic”
is that even though the structure of the composition is relatively
straightforward, and the different melodies are easy to get, most performances
I have heard sounded muddled. Or, not as
“clean” as it should sound. Not even the
Boston Symphony managed to make it sound clean, and now I wonder if that is
possible at all. Some symphonies
(Tchaikovsky Pathetique comes to mind) are meant to be wild, although I never
would have put Brahms’s second in that category. All that aside, this was an enjoyable
performance. The piece calls for many
solo passages from the woodwind and brass instruments, and they all did a
marvelous job. In the description there
was no mention of tuba, but interestingly one was present, giving the brass
section a solid footing. (Wikepedia
reference does mention a tuba.)
Andris Nelsons
is a young conductor (born 1978), this is his second year with the BSO, which
had gone without a music director for a while since Levine resigned a few years
ago. I had seen him conducting at the
Met a few years back, but frankly forgot how he did (and the conductor usually
isn’t the focus in an opera performance anyway.) I was impressed with how he moved the music
forward. It did seem he seldom stood
straight: he leaned forward, sideways, and backwards a lot; he also crouched
down a lot, but I didn’t see him jump all that much. A “more is more” type, but gets the job well
done.
Our son’s place,
where we are staying, is a bit less than a mile from the Assembly T-station,
Anne and I walked there to catch the subway into town. It was a bit on the cold side (high 40s) when
we walked back. We had only time for a
quick bite at a nearby Panera Bread.
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