Blomstedt's masterful Schubert and Brahms with the Boston Symphony

After last month’s Beethoven Festival, this week’s Boston Symphony program featured two composers who felt the shadow of his symphonies as a burden. Schubert never lived long enough to completely answer the question he reportedly asked himself in his teens, “Who can do anything after Beethoven?” Brahms was 43 years old before he finally formulated an answer and finished his First Symphony.

This program also marked the return of Herbert Blomstedt to Symphony Hall. Though, at 97, he needed help and support to make his way to and from the podium and conducted seated, his focus and command dispelled any appearance of frailty. Conducting from memory, his gestures remained, as always, minimal and close to his body. His glance was still as important as his hands .The first time he raised an arm above his head it had a dramatic effect as he cued the brass chorale in the final movement of the Brahms. Clarity, balance and dialogue between and among sections – hallmarks of a Blomstedt performance – were abetted by his seating the orchestra with second violins to his right, cellos next to the first violins and double basses behind them along the stage right corner wall. The violas faced him with woodwinds behind and brass spread out along the back wall.

Schubert’s Sixth shows the composer trying on new clothes as he continues to synthesize what has come before and what is present to refine his own symphonic voice. The flashiest piece of attire comes from Rossini, whose work was captivating Vienna at the time and whose influence is most clearly heard in the winds. Schubert makes them a driving force rather than a secondary one. Blomstedt’s seating and use of a smaller orchestra brought their keystone role and agile interplay with the strings even more to the fore. The symphony sang and bubbled brightly with high spirits and the Scherzo flashed an impish wink at the third movement of Beethoven’s Seventh.

With a larger orchestra on stage (eight double basses!), Blomstedt’s Brahms was oceanic, its motivic waves swelling and subsiding in the muted, autumnal glow of an overcast day. It was also poised and unaffected, conveying a sense of intimacy in the inner movements and vastness and turbulence in the outer ones. Clearing skies and brighter light finally illuminated the scene as the last movement closed. Along the way, he infused the contrapuntal qualities of the score with weight and dramatic tension, the latter tempering the former obviating any sense of heaviness. Inner voices sang clearly and solos were given space and free rein to make their points. The expressive second movement solo by the afternoon’s concertmaster, Alexander Velinzon, and principal horn, Richard Sebring, was perfectly balanced with each audible and neither overpowering the other. In these instances, when Blomstedt lingered, it was with loving attention to detail and dramatically appropriate. Towards the end, though, there was some noticeable albeit intermittent slackening. However, when Blomstedt broadened the tempo to cede center stage to the brass chorale, it pealed sacramental like a mighty organ consecrating a renewed resolve and sparked a cathartic release.

Blomstedt demonstrated he has much left to say. His mind remains sharp and his musicianship compelling. Let’s hope his body allows him to carry on.