As Music Director Andris Nelsons departs for European engagements, the Boston Symphony continues its Tanglewood season with a series of guest conductors. On Saturday night, the BSO performed under the baton of Elim Chan in a programme of 20th-century works, neither of them revolutionary in idiom, but each imbued with a distinctive and distinguished orchestral colour palette.
Composed in 1945 during his wartime exile in Hollywood, Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major openly acknowledges its cinematographic origins, incorporating themes adapted from his film scores. One can occasionally visualise a cowboy riding valiantly across sandstone buttes. Nevertheless, in the right hands, the work ultimately rises above mere pastiche.
Leonidas Kavakos, a frequent guest at Tanglewood, played with a quiet authority that privileged refinement over dazzle. His tone, especially in the middle and lower registers, was warm and centred, and his phrasing revealed emotional profundity, though always within a framework of restraint. At times, though, his interpretive distance bordered on detachment, softening the work’s more overt emotional gestures. In the slow movement, he sustained the long lines with finely controlled breath and vibrato, while the finale, adapted from The Prince and the Pauper, danced with agile wit and rhythmic clarity. As an encore, he offered the Loure from Bach’s E major Partita, BWV1006, delivered with understated dignity.
Chan proved an alert and responsive partner, shaping orchestral textures with transparency and a keen ear for detail, thereby revealing more depth than the concerto’s glittering surfaces might suggest. She let the melodies unfurl naturally but knew when to tighten the reins, and the BSO responded with a bright, clean sound to her direction.
After the interval, Chan turned to Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony a score that can lose momentum without careful shaping. Her approach stressed continuity and drive, yet preserved the music’s expressive richness. The opening Largo unfolded with dark warmth; the long-breathed string lines carried by an underlying sense of motion. In the Allegro moderato, Chan balanced grandeur with restraint, allowing the thematic material to build naturally at its own pace. The BSO strings delivered the surging climaxes with richness and cohesion, while the brass provided a firm, burnished foundation.
The Scherzo was taut and rhythmically alert, its leaping figures and syncopated accents projected with precision. Rachmaninov’s darker impulses briefly gave way to exuberant propulsion. The Adagio that followed unfolded with admirable restraint. Rather than overstating the emotion, Chan let William R Hudgins’ clarinet solo emerge organically from the surrounding texture. The brief duets between Robert Sheena (cor anglais) and John Ferrillo (oboe) were similarly tender and unmannered, while the later exchange involving Richard Sebring’s horn and the violins had a quiet radiance.
The finale opened with vigour but not bombast, its first theme launched with confident sweep. Chan maintained firm structural control, steering the episodic layout with well-judged pacing and proportion. Even in the broad, lyrical passages, she resisted indulgence, allowing the music to breathe while keeping the forward momentum. The string playing was lithe and finely etched, and the brass brought weight without overwhelming the texture.
In her Tanglewood debut, Elim Chan proved herself to be a conductor of precision, energy and expressive poise. She conducted both works with clarity and conviction, guiding the Boston Symphony through a programme that favoured nuance over novelty.
