In its chamber music textures, Shostakovich's 15th couldn’t provide greater contrast to Rachmaninov’s rainforest of notes in this Slavic double bill from Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony.
In Germany, the Christmas Oratorio is performed with the same frequency during the holiday season as Messiah in English-speaking countries. In Boston, the BSO gives its first performance!
The new Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester leads a passionate rendering of Mahler 5, while Håkan Hardenberger gives a masterclass in trumpet colour.
Mahler for beginners? Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra provide exemplary clarity and understanding of structure, but don't hit one in the chest in the way the Third can.
Playing Mahler’s Third Symphony was also meant to be an homage to Leonard Bernstein, one of the great interpreters of Mahler’s music, born 100 years ago this week.
Under Andris Nelsons' baton, the musical canvas was remarkably supple with proper light shed on Puccini’s melodic inventiveness and wondrous orchestration.
At Carnegie Hall Jean-Yves Thibaudet successfully brought forward the mercurial character of Bernstein's music, while Andris Nelsons highlighted details in Shostakovich.
Andris Nelsons' Mozart–Shostakovich pairing allowed the Boston Symphony winds to take the spotlight in the first half, leaving the strings and limited percussion to their task in the second.
Mahler had Walter, Mitropoulos and, most importantly, Bernstein to champion him in the US. Bruckner was never as fortunate... until now. When Andris Nelsons succeeded James Levine as Music Director of the Boston Symphony, he specifically mentioned Bruckner as a composer he would program regularly, in marked contrast to his predecessor’s antipathy.
In the recently refurbished Suntory Hall, looking remarkably fresh with a newly refitted wooden stage, the Boston Symphony sounded elegant and sumptuous.
Youth was a hindrance rather than a virtue in this testosterone-driven performance which sought more than anything to sock the audience between the eyes
With Andris Nelsons' withdrawal from Bayreuth last year, the BSO’s summer home, Tanglewood, became the venue for his Wagner with a concert performance of Das Rheingold
Since the days of Charles Munch and Serge Koussevitzky, the Boston Symphony Orchestra has always excelled in rendering the characteristics of the French musical idiom.
Sofia Gubaidulina has always been drawn to non-traditional sounds, something which invariably landed her in trouble during the Soviet era. The bayan, a 200-button Russian accordion, became the source for many of those sounds in solo and concerted pieces. “It breathes,” she has said, possessing an “earthy quality like no other instrument”.
Renée Fleming has decided the time is right to bow out gracefully from the operatic stage, choosing her signature role to bid the fondest of farewells to London.
In a time when death and mourning lack any public or communal aspect, where the funeral procession has ceased to exist save for royalty and the occasional head of state, what relevance does the traditional dirge have?
It would be no exaggeration to say Franz Hawlata stole the show, an act of grand larceny made all the more remarkable by the strong cast which shared the stage.
