Boston's other orchestras – part two: BPO

[Click for part one] On Sunday afternoon I heard the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra perform in Cambridge. The BPO has passed their 35th anniversary, with conductor Benjamin Zander at the podium for all 35 years. They typically perform four programs a season with concerts taking place over an extended weekend in New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall, Harvard's Sanders Theatre and sometimes at Mechanics Hall in Worcester. Gala events calling for choral accompaniment take place in Symphony Hall. I have heard Benjamin Zander in many of his pre-concert talks; most of what I learned about Gustav Mahler and his symphonies came from the maestro's lectures.

The Philharmonic began Sunday's concert with about a third of its members onstage to play the overture to Mozart's opera, Così fan tutte. Zander took this piece at a brisk pace, faster than I have ever heard it played before, but the reduced forces had the lightness to pull it off. The tempo accentuated the comic tone of the opera and revealed the balanced relationship of some early phrases to later ones in the overture. It is easy to see why most conductors take it slower: there are some murderously quick runs that can trip up wind players.

The next work was also by Mozart, his Sinfonia concertante in E flat major, K364. A few more unneeded players left the stage, and two teachers from the New England Conservatory joined the orchestra to play the solo violin and viola parts. The conductor executed an impressive long crescendo over the first few pages, but things got strange after that. The violist scooped around her pitches, and the violinist seemed just plain careless. The simplest definition of good technic is the ability to make something difficult look easy. These two soloists made Mozart's music sound difficult. The Sinfonia concertante came off as a collegial vanity piece and a waste of the BPO's resources.

Fortunately, the conductor and orchestra were in their element for the second half of the program. All 90 or so musicians took the stage for Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphony No 2 in in E minor. The response to the soaring late-Romantic lyricism was immediate. The English horn has a solo in the first movement, and Nicole Caligiuri made it glow. Eric Carmen's 1975 ballad "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again" is based on the main theme of the third movement, so it is impossible to listen to Rachmaninoff's symphony without hearing that soppy torch song. Fourth movement – big finish – much applause. I left the concert regretting the missed opportunity for the Boston Philharmonic to repeat the magic of last year's all-Russian program (see my past report, BPO conquers Russia).