Concerts 2012-13
CONCERT ONE: Oct 25, 27, 28, 2012
The 2012-2013 season of the Boston Philharmonic opens with a masterpiece by Sibelius that you probably have never heard, Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island. That The Swan of Tuonela, drawn from the same cycle of works as this tone poem, has become a universal favorite while The Maidens has remained relatively unknown outside of Scandinavia is truly a mystery. This musical description of the hero’s boat journey to the island and his adventures there – mostly amorous – is a work of stirring, craggy Nordic beauty and searing intensity. It is bound to make a deep impression on all who are encountering it for the first time.
Prokofiev wrote his stunningly virtuosic Second Violin Concerto around the same time that he was composing the ballet Romeo and Juliet, and the similarity of much of the music of the concerto to that of the beloved ballet has certainly played its part in endearing it to audiences. Its first movement has a soaring big theme that instantly brings to mind the young lovers of the balcony scene. The second movement is tender and graceful, and the finale is like a crazed fiddler stalking a village dance. Stefan Jackiw is the extraordinary soloist. This young violinist is familiar to BPO audiences from his unforgettable performances of the concertos of Sibelius and Beethoven. Jackiw is renowned for the poised elegance of his playing, his impeccable technique, and the sincerity and depth of his interpretations.
And to end, Richard Strauss’s enthralling tone poem Don Quixote. The composer creates a lush orchestral soundscape in which the first cello plays a virtuosic, soulful, unpredictable Don Quixote to the first viola’s more down to earth and wry Sancho Panza. Two of fiction’s great characters achieve their definitive musical form in this Strauss masterwork. The Don in these performances will be none other than Rafael Popper-Keizer, a luminary on Boston’s musical scene who for many years has been the BPO’s brilliant first cellist.
CONCERT TWO: Nov 15, 17, 18, 2012
Music has extraordinary power to heal. Rachmaninoff is a case in point. In 1895 the humiliating failure of his First Symphony precipitated a clinical depression that lasted for five years, during which he was unable to compose. But finally a brilliant experimental hypnotherapist was able to crack the shell, and when he started to compose again – the Second Piano Concerto – the music flowed as never before. That familiar sound world that we associate with his name begins with this work, not before it.
A piece so loved, so well known “Rach 2” barely needs to be described. But it does need to be stressed that this work was once new, that it once impressed audiences because of its originality, not its familiarity. It is this sense of stumbling upon a new and very original musical landscape that these performances will be attempting to rediscover. And leading this voyage of discovery will be the phenomenal seventeen year old pianist George Li. BPO concert goers will remember his spellbinding, musically mature and deeply poetic performance of the Saint-Saëns Second Piano Concerto several years ago when, at thirteen, he was the youngest soloist ever to play with the orchestra. Since then he has been hugely honored here and abroad, won competitions, and is acknowledged as one of the most important pianistic talents to have emerged in the present century.
The Shostakovich Fifth Symphony came as balm to the beleaguered and oppressed citizens of the Soviet Union in 1937. The poignant song of grief of its slow movement was something its first audience, in the throes of the Stalinist Terror, fully understood and openly wept to. The symphony’s encrypted message of perseverance in the face of frightening oppression still has the power both to terrify and to inspire in today’s less repressive but still very complex political climate.
CONCERT THREE: Feb 21, 23, 24, 2013
The Mahler Sixth has occupied a very prominent place in the musical life of Ben Zander and in the history of the Boston Philharmonic. The commercial recording, made many years ago, was one of the artistic high-water marks for the orchestra. It was lavishly praised in the international press at the time and, although it has been unavailable for the past few years, it is still often singled out by critics as their favorite recording of the symphony.
The Sixth is the darkest of the Mahler symphonies. Unnecessarily nicknamed by the composer “The Tragic” – could anyone possibly not notice? – it faces the grimmest realities of life and death unflinchingly. And it does so with infinite and surprising variety. In the first movement there is the ecstasy of the music associated with his beloved wife Alma, the evocation of lonely and serene Alpine landscapes, the brutal tramping of inexorable marches. The second movement brings grim, parodistic elements, and the third – music of heartbreaking beauty – has a bittersweet, nostalgic evocativeness. The relentless finale, from its opening eerie and unsettling harmonies, traces the struggles and apparent victories of the “Hero” – Mahler or Everyman, it can be read either way – and his annihilation by the three hammer blows of fate, which are quite possibly the most terrifying extra-musical noise ever composed into a symphony.
It is a long time since the BPO has performed the Mahler Sixth, and its return is long overdue. This concert is sure to create huge excitement in Boston’s musical community.
CONCERT FOUR: April 19, 2013 (Concert will be held in Symphony Hall)
The wide world boasts many exalted peaks, but there is only one Everest. So, too, in music, there are symphonies of great length and grandeur, works of true dramatic and philosophical weight (particularly the symphonies of Mahler), but there is only one Ninth. It remains, after nearly two hundred years of symphonic creativity by musical giants like Schumann, Brahms, Shostakovich and, yes, Mahler, THE Ninth. It remains the ultimate challenge for an orchestral conductor, as virtually any conductor will attest, and it remains music’s ultimate affirmation of the indomitable human spirit. No other work delivers this particular, powerful message in music of the richest complexity that is still understandable by everyone, everywhere.
Like the Mahler Sixth, the Beethoven Ninth became an acclaimed recording by the BPO; it was, in fact, the first commercial recording the orchestra ever made, recorded in 1990. Astonishingly, we have not returned to this seminal work for twenty-two years. So to end this season, which in some ways is a retrospective of the BPO’s most acclaimed past achievements, we move to Symphony Hall for a gala performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The marvelous soloists are Michelle Johnson, Sarah Heltzel, Yeghishe Manucharyan and Sam McElroy. Be sure to mark this on your calendar now!