Bach is a volcano

Pablo Casals described Johann Sebastian Bach as a volcano, but on Thursday night at Symphony Hall Bach simmered like a hot spring in a Finnish landscape. The Boston Symphony Orchestra was a brooding force of nature in Sibelius's Violin Concerto in D minor, and soloist Frank Peter Zimmermann encored with a selection from Bach's Partita in E major, BWV1006. Zimmermann kept the Prelude at a rolling boil, and the violin gleamed in the auditorium's acoustic sweet spot.

Symphony Hall also cast its sonic embrace around Schubert's Symphony in C, 'The Great', D944. This is the music the building was made for. This work is usually performed as a stately tribute to a composer who died too young, but Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena took it at a scampering clip. This is the opus of a young man who finally found his voice in the symphonic form. Mena's reading had the ebullience of Felix Mendelssohn, who conducted the premiere after Schubert's death.

Mark Volpe, the BSO's managing director, addressed the audience before the concert to acknowledge the passing of Tom Menino. The evening was dedicated to Boston's former mayor, and the performance proved to be an affirmation of life.

Boston's other orchestras – part one: Indian Hill

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has a fall season, a winter season, holiday Pops, spring Pops, summers at Tanglewood and worldwide concert tours: they are a year-round operation with international acclaim. There are other groups in and around Boston that are more orchestras of occasion; they might perform only six one-night concerts in the course of a year. The classical repertoire is the classical repertoire (new commissions aside), and there are bound to be overlaps in programming. Last year I saw two ensembles perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No 25, and this year I have already heard Beethoven's Symphony No 8 twice in as many weeks. So how do Boston's alternative orchestras distinguish themselves?

A visit to the BSO at Symphony Hall provides a grand-scale musical experience, but it is possible that you will be sitting a city block away and several stories above the musicians. The other orchestras usually perform in smaller venues where you can get an up-close experience. The conductors often give pre-concert lectures that spotlight various aspects of the music you are about to hear; there are even post-concert receptions where the conductor and musicians will discuss the performance with the audience over coffee and desserts. These interactions offer insight to the interpretive choices that make familiar repertoire come off in ever-surprising new ways.

On Saturday night I was in Littleton, Massachusetts, where the Orchestra of Indian Hill kicked off its 40th season. This group comprises full-time musicians, who perform with various organizations and teach music on the side, and semi-professionals, typically conservatory-trained musicians who have other day gigs. The conductor, Bruce Hangen, directs the orchestral programs at Boston Conservatory and was a guest conductor with the Boston Pops for decades. Indian Hill's selection of works for this concert highlighted the top-level abilities of the orchestra. Richard Strauss's tone poem, Don Juan, is a showcase for all the instruments, but the oboe and the clarinet in the central section stood out in particular. If Don Juan paints in sweeping oil colors, Mozart's Symphony No 31, 'Paris', is finely etched pen and ink. The occasional flute passages caught my ear, making me want to hear more of principal flutist Melissa Mielens's gorgeous tone.

The main work of the evening was Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 4, a masterpiece of melodic Romanticism. It starts with a fanfare in the horns, who pass it down to the trombones and tuba, who then yield to the trumpets. This was as fine as any brass playing you will hear anywhere. In the second movement maestro Hangen (as he explained in the post-concert debriefing) let the oboe set the pace and gave the violins freedom to follow suit. The result had relaxed charm and a waltzing swing. The third movement features the violins, violas, cellos and basses playing pizzicato (on plucked strings). The strings give way to a passage of exemplary scoring for winds; the brass have their little say before handing it back to the strings. Hangen took this movement slower than I am used to hearing, but the pulse and phrasing had satisfying logic. The cumulative effect was both whimsical and breathtaking. The fourth movement built to a huge finale that was thunderous without crossing into blare.

Instead of my usual perch in the top balcony, I sat in the front row for this concert. There is a noticeably different connection to a performance when you can see the eyes of the players. There were points when the violins swayed back and forth as one body, and I found myself swaying with them. My only complaint was intermittent tuning problems in the cellos. Some passages gleamed with locked-in unison, but others soured with one cello under pitch. Still, it wasn't enough to dampen my enthusiasm for a night of terrific music-making. [Click for part two]

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).

R.I.P. Frühbeck, part two

This is the second weekend of concerts that the late Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos was meant to conduct with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His original program remains in place, and in retrospect it seems he had planned his own swansong. The first item is J.S. Bach's Cantata No 82, 'Ich habe genug'. The title aria translates as "I am content", and Frühbeck could certainly reflect back on his career with satisfaction. He was principal conductor in Berlin, Montreal, Vienna, Tokyo and Dresden, and he guest conducted in most of the major cities around the world, including New York, London, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston. The other arias from the cantata, Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen (Fall asleep, you weary eyes) and Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod (I look forward to my death) suggest that Frühbeck had his own mortality in mind when he chose this composition.

The second item on the program is A German Requiem by Johannes Brahms. The work spans seven movements; the selected texts from the Lutheran bible offer comfort to our suffering, meditate on the fleetingness of human life and anticipate the joys that await us hereafter. The themes of contented resignation from the Bach cantata resonate in the closing section of the requiem: "they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them."

Welsh conductor Bramwell Tovey took the baton for this concert and proved himself adept in vocal works. Joining him for the Bach cantata was fellow Welshman Bryn Terfel. This bass-baritone looks and sounds like he could hail a ship from shore, yet riding above his robust set of lungs is a shimmer of sweet facial resonance. Terfel could just as easily sing a baby to sleep in his arms. 

The Bach employed just 21 musicians: an oboe soloist, a bassoon, a console organ with cello to accompany the recitatives, one string bass, four violas and a dozen violins. In contrast, the Brahms used a full orchestra, harp, pipe organ, chorus and two vocal soloists. There were easily two hundred performers onstage. In order to accommodate forces of this size, the Symphony Hall house managers remove the first few rows of audience seating and extend the stage with a ten-foot thrust. It took four and a half minutes for the 120 members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus to file in to the five levels of risers behind the orchestra. 

The chorus sang from memory and stood through most of the hour-long work (one alto needed to take an early seat). They matched Bryn Terfel's impact with some full-throated singing, but they were most impressive in the blended harmonies of the quietest sections. The full chorus got to sit in the fifth movement, when we finally heard the female soloist, Rosemary Joshua. The Welsh soprano had a rich, ringing sound that carried the hall. 

Bramwell Tovey conducted with fluid gestures but never called attention to himself. What struck me most was how right the two works sounded, with well judged tempos and no jarring eccentricities. The requiem closed with a brief silence, a fitting tribute to Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, may he rest in peace.

Free concert in a sub-basement

Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are in the midst of a series of free community chamber concerts. Last weekend a string quartet performed at Beverly's Larcom Theatre, and today they repeated the same program in Cambridge. The venue was the 200-seat blondwood lecture hall in the sub-basement of the new main library. The gently raked seating had good sight lines and made for a comfortable hour of up-close music appreciation.

The players were Victor Romanul and Jason Horowitz on violins, Michael Zaretsky on viola and Blaise Déjardin on cello. Their program dovetailed with items heard in recent concerts of the full orchestra. Carl Nielsen's String Quartet No 4 in F had a Nordic flavor in the third movement, with skipping folk rhythms and a few fiddling slides. The musicians were having fun, and it was equally fun to listen to. 

The violinists swapped first and second chairs for Franz Schubert's String Quartet in A minor, D804. The second movement quoted the main theme from the incidental music to Rosamunde, which the BSO played two weeks ago. It must be an engaging change of pace for these orchestral musicians to work as a chamber ensemble, but there was a sense that this was a pick-up quartet sight reading their parts. They seemed more attuned to the sheet music than each other; there was little of the eye contact that would indicate shared familiarity with the material. There were quick corrections of missed notes, the cello had a tendency to play flat, and they could have milked more expression out of the final movement of the Schubert without going overboard.

Still, I got my money's worth, and there was even a coffee and dessert reception afterwards. The coming weekends will feature a string quintet playing in Medford, Lowell, East Boston and Dedham. Go to BSO.org for locations and to reserve your free ticket.

R.I.P. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos

Conductors don't seem to have a retirement age; they just keep conducting until the final beat. Arthur Fiedler led the Boston Pops from 1930 until his death in 1979 at the age of 84. Leopold Stokowski, the maestro from Walt Disney's Fantasia, conducted with willful vigor until shortly before his death at the age of 95. Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos had a contract with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra as their principal conductor through 2015, but he put down his baton earlier this year due to failing health. He was meant to conduct the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood this summer, but he succumbed to cancer on June 11th, aged 80. Canadian conductor Jacques Lacombe stepped in to lead the Tanglewood program of Rachmaninoff and Verdi.

Frühbeck was also scheduled to lead the current two weekends at Symphony Hall. After his death the BSO website listed the conductor for these programs as TBA. Finally, six weeks ago the BSO announced in a press release that Swiss conductor Thierry Fischer would conduct the first weekend, keeping the same program of Brahms's Piano Concerto No 1 and Carl Nielsen's Symphony No 4, 'The Inextinguishable'. Welsh conductor Bramwell Tovey seems an appropriate choice to take over next week's program of vocal works, joining Welsh soloists Bryn Terfel and Rosemary Joshua. 

For tonight's concert Maestro Fischer came to the stage with Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder, and together they set to work on the Brahms concerto. Fischer had sharp arm gestures that got the right orchestral snap out of the first movement. I was again seated above the violins, so I got to look over Mr Buchbinder's shoulder while he played, his hands reflected in the polished keyboard cover. It was a pleasure to watch the economical fluidity of his fingers produce such big results. The second movement was more of a piano meditation decorated by wind ensembles and a tender viola solo. The piano launched the third movement and kept the energy driving to a rousing finish. Although Symphony Hall was only at quarter capacity this evening, the audience applauded as if it were a full house.

Nielsen's symphony broke like a calving glacier, with a wall of brass and shuddering violas. The continuous four movements were a cascade of textures, with wind chorales, plucked strings, soaring strings and dueling timpanists stage left and stage right. It was interesting to see how many of the musicians fitted ear plugs in and out during the performance. The conductor and orchestra earned another thunderous ovation, marking an auspicious debut for Thierry Fischer.

Opera and foliage

Opera in Boston is like peak foliage: it lasts about a week and then it's over. Sometimes it is spectacular, sometimes less so, but you can't control what you will see. You have to take what comes your way and look for the beauty in it.

Boston Lyric Opera mounts three or four productions a year, with five or so performances each. The company is currently performing Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata (the fallen woman). The story centers around Violetta, a terminally consumptive courtesan who gives her heart to Alfredo, a young admirer. Germont, Alfredo's father, demands the end of the romance to save the honor of his family. Violetta's moment of true love is all too brief, like her own life. She will be dead by the end of Act Three.

The overall quality of Wednesday's performance was quite good, a straightforward telling of the story, for the most part uncluttered by misguided directorial concepts. There was a moment of perhaps unintended irony in the third scene: a chorus of debauchers stands aghast when the forsaken Alfredo flings a pile of money at Violetta. "What's wrong with you? How could you do that?"

Anya Matanovic, in her BLO debut, won the audience over as Violetta. Her rich tone never obscured the words she was singing; she savored the text and found nuances that were clear without the surtitles. She didn't go for the optional high note near the end of the first scene, but if any soprano in any opera  sang as well as she did, the art form would be in an enviable state.

Michael Wade Lee, also in his company debut, has all the makings of an Italianate tenor: robust sound, easy high notes, unforced emotional instincts. He's still unpolished, though, and there were quite a few wayward pitches. Nevertheless, I liked his Alfredo. He was a refreshing change from the usual Boston fare of straining tenors with unpleasant tone.

Baritone Weston Hurt was a more than satisfactory Germont. He had a secure voice that, again, you could only hope for on any given night at the opera. Germont in this production was a military commander who had lost an arm in some past battle. The singer couldn't rely on stock arm gestures [read bad operatic acting] with one sleeve pinned to his shoulder, but he hadn't yet developed other means of bringing his character to life.

Conductor Arthur Fagen led a good pace and kept steady control between the pit and stage. The orchestra showed some rumbling power in the bass drum and timpani, but the violins had trouble playing in tune with each other. The chorus and secondary singers were commendable, although some voices came across as unnaturally amplified. If Boston had an ongoing, continuous season, this production of La traviata would be considered a fine night at the opera, and the rough edges would yield to more refinement. For now, audiences have to be content with seeing the occasional display and hoping for the spectacular.

Pro Arte – a double echo from the past

The Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra played a concert of Respighi, Mozart and Beethoven in Harvard Square on Saturday night. The venue was the spacious First Church Cambridge, with fifty-foot vaulted ceilings over the nave and a deeply recessed altar. The acoustics of this architecture would be well suited to plainchant, its long meandering vocal lines lingering in a cavernous echo to evoke infinite time and space. The orchestra used this reverberation to its advantage in the first item of the program.

Ottorino Respighi was a twentieth-century composer who very much looked back to earlier musical eras. His 1932 work for string orchestra, Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No 3, is an adaptation of 16th- and 17th-century music for lute and guitar. The Pro Arte string section comprises twenty players: 6 first violins, 5 second violins, 4 violas, 3 cellos and 2 basses. The violins sat to the left (as we looked at them) with their sound holes facing the audience. This gave their instruments an immediate and bright sound. The violas, larger and darker-toned instruments, were to the center right of the semicircle, with their sound holes facing the altar. This means their sound had to travel to the far curves of the chancel before coming back to the audience. In the "Arie di corte" the viola answer to the violin theme was quieter and carried more reverb; the effect was like a ghost of music past summoned across the centuries.

The Pro Arte bills itself as a "Mozart-sized orchestra", which means they perform with 20 to 35 players, in contrast to the 50 to 60+ players of a full symphony orchestra. This leanness paid off in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major, K622. The soloist was Ian Greitzer, the principal clarinetist of the ensemble, and he showed a masterful ability to play with whisper softness. This in turn drew quiet support from the musicians behind him, keeping the cavernous echo out of play.

The final piece was Beethoven's Symphony No 8 in F major. The historically informed movement of recent decades has led to a reexamination of Beethoven's music. Bloated performance practice has been swept aside in favor of the quicker tempos that the composer actually marked in his scores. Is there an absolute correct way to play Beethoven's symphonies? The results from Pro Arte's attempt would suggest not.

Conductor Kevin Rhodes gave a spirited reading of the symphony but didn't reckon with the acoustics of the church. Any loud passage, and there were quite a few, produced an over-reverberation that blurred the details of the score. There are several points in the the first movement where Beethoven writes five beats of silence. The echo was just dying away by the time the instruments came in again. The second movement has the winds playing repeated pulses in the background, but these musicians were competing with their own slap-back. It would have been more rewarding for Rhodes to find a slower tempo that aligned the echo of one note to the attack of a following note. A stately, genial reading could have been just as valid as a sprightly one in the given circumstances.

The B-section of the third movement begins with two horns harmonizing on a broad melody, with a solo cello skipping up and down the fingerboard and basses plucking the downbeats. The Pro Arte horns warbled away, obliterating the cello. The cellist might just have well not played at all; the moment would have come off better with the "uninformed" practice of all three cellos playing a sectional soli. The rollicking fourth movement was mud.

I applaud Pro Arte's mission, but this chamber orchestra needs to find the right chamber. The next concert in January is at First Baptist Church Newton. I am not optimistic.

Vini del Piemonte – past report 3/20/2014

On Thursday evening the Boston office had a sampling of wines from the Piedmont region of Italy. Here is a summary of what we experienced.

Roero, Arneis – The name of this white grape, Arneis, literally means 'little rascal', because it is tricky to grow this variety properly. But our bottle was a perfect exemplar of the style: a characteristic dryness carried the aroma and flavor of pears. This wine would be a fine pairing for fish or chicken, or just in a glass by itself. It went surprisingly well with H—'s homemade chocolate biscotti, evoking chocolate-dipped fruit. There were many satisfied nods from the tasters.

Scarpa, RossoScarpa, 2010 – this 90/10 blend of Dolcetto and Ruchè grapes came across as inoffensive yet unappealing. Somewhat watery, it gave an aroma of school paste. The Dolcetto is sometimes called the Beaujolais of Italy, and our classification of table wine was amended to lunch wine, and then re-amended to breakfast wine. It would certainly be improved by whatever you were eating at the time, like J—'s diced vegetable salsa.

Sabinot, Barbera, 2011 – the deep purple color was immediately striking, and a swirl in the glass released an aroma of dark cherries. The taste carried the flavors of blackberry jam and unripe plums, which reminded me of Pinot Noir. I found this wine to be a flavor amplifier, bringing a 10x magnification to M—'s mini quiches. This bottle was hands-down the crowd pleaser.

Barbaresco, Nebbiolo, 2009 – it was hard to take in the next two wines, because they are heavily tannic and want to be partnered with meat and bold cheeses. Even the aroma of this Barbaresco showed more muscle: this time I picked up wallpaper paste. There was also a whiff of menthol and anise, which was a turnoff to some of the tasters.

Barolo, Nebbiolo, 2009 – this was a somewhat tamer expression of the Nebbiolo grape that became friendlier the more you swirled it in your glass. I found the edge of the tannins made a perfect right angle to the garlic in H—'s Salsa di Parmesan.

Mozart conducted from the piano

Christian Zacharias, a German conductor and pianist, joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra this weekend for a program of Austrian composers. He began Thursday evening's concert with Franz Schubert's incidental music to the play Rosamunde. The play died after two performances, but the score has lived on in the orchestral repertoire.

Zacharias conducted Ballet Music I and Entr'actes II & III from memory and without a baton. He drew a detailed balance from the orchestra that lifted this incidental music to a higher level. The interplay among the wind instruments was particularly ear-catching. 

After the Schubert suite there was a brief pause as the lower strings left the stage. Stage managers cleared a wide path, struck the podium and wheeled in a Steinway concert grand. The players came back in followed by Zacharias, who went to the piano to perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No 17 in G major, K453. The keyboard faced the orchestra, with the piano lid removed to give the musicians a clear sight line to the pianist/conductor. 

Zacharias stood and conducted the first seventy measures, again batonless and from memory, then sat to prepare his first piano entrance. The BSO didn't need much guidance to continue in tempo, but the soloist would use a free hand, a head nod or body language to emphasize downbeats or shape the dynamics. He played Mozart's own written cadenzas, showing that there is no need to improve on the master. Zacharias loves this music, the musicians loved playing it with him, and I loved being there to hear it.

The piano disappeared during the intermission, and the second half of the program returned to Schubert. The orchestra played Entr'acte I from Rosamunde as a pre-movement to Symphony in B minor, 'Unfinished'. I was again struck by the textures that Zacharias got out of the musicians: a whisper of a tremolo from the violas and cellos in the entr'acte; the singing tone of the cellos in the main melody of the symphony's first movement. The softs were delicate, the louds were full but never overblown.

I go to Symphony Hall in the hope of witnessing excellence.This evening it was hope fulfilled. If you get a chance to attend Saturday's concert, or at least listen to the live radio broadcast, you will be rewarded with exemplary music-making.

An Oktoberfest of German wines

Nothing says October like Oktober, and the Boston office welcomed the fall season with a sampling of German wines. This event doubled as a belated celebration of Germany's victory in the World Cup.

First up was Unckrich, a 2011 Pfalz Spätburgunder, which we know better as Pinot Noir. There was some debate as to whether we were detecting black cherries or sour cherries, but a second visit revealed a hint of baking chocolate. While this is a dry red, it would complement a meal that was meant to finish with Black Forest Cherry Cake.

Next we compared two Gewürtztraminers. The Lucien Albrecht 2009 Réserve is from Alsace, which is technically in France. But this border region has been contested for centuries enough to be partly German in spirit. Alsacian wines generally have a drier and more floral character than their German counterparts, but this bottle gave off a strong aroma and flavor of honey. We would recommended this as a white wine for mead lovers. The G & M Machmer 2011 Gewürtz from Bechtheim, Germany, was an unapologetic dessert wine. One of our tasters found liquid love and melted into a puddle of happiness.

We then moved on to three Rieslings. The 2013 George Albrecht Schneider Kabinett (dry Riesling) cleared the palate with its limestone astringency. It proved a good pairing to the Sauerkraut over slow-cooked Kielbasa in Beer. The medium-dry Ulrich Langguth 2012 Hessian Riesling was modest on its own, but it sprang to life with the cinnamon, toasted nut and dried fruit in the homemade Oatmeal Cranberry Walnut cookies. The Loosen Brothers 2013 Dr. L, a Mosel Riesling with engaging complexities over a medium-sweet base, got many favorable nods.

The hands-down crowd pleaser was the non-alcoholic Welch's Sparkling Caramel Apple juice. An aroma of unwrapped caramels invited you into a flavor playground of apple-infused cream soda. We were a bunch of grinning kids sipping candy in a glass. Pass the Gummi Bears!

Pollini and the sound of silence

Maurizio Pollini gave a solo piano recital at Symphony Hall on Sunday afternoon as part of the Celebrity Series. This concert was notable for one thing I didn't hear: the clatter of unoccupied seats during the performance.

Harvard University physicist Wallace Clement Sabine was responsible for the acoustic design of Symphony Hall. He felt that the ideal reverberation time for symphonic music was 2–2.5 seconds, and he guided the design of the ceiling, wall niches, seat cushions, ventilation system and overall shape of the auditorium to achieve this ideal. When Symphony Hall opened in 1900 it was praised for its acoustic perfection.

Unfortunately, audience noise carried just as well as the music coming from the stage. In any given performance you would hear the wooden THUNK of a folded seat accidentally falling to its open position.

Innovation has come 114 years later in the form of spring hinges. Empty seats now stay upright, and the hall's renowned acoustics are free from distracting detonations. If only engineers could do something about the HACK of ill-timed coughing, the SMACK of programs falling from laps, and the BOODLE-OODLE-OODLE-OO of unsilenced mobile phones.

On to the concert.

Maurizio Pollini has had a 50-year career as a classical pianist. He made his mark as an interpreter of 20th-century music, but for Sunday's recital he looked back to two early Romantic composers. In the first half of the program he played Robert Schumann's Arabeske in C major, Op 18, and the eight-movement Kreisleriana, Op 16. Symphony Hall's reverb proved a bit too much for a solo piano, blurring the details of quick passages. But it was satisfying to hear an elder statesman of the instrument give these works their due, with attention to dynamic shading and the long arcs of the melodic structures.

The second half of the recital comprised music of Frédéric Chopin. Pollini started with Sonata No 2 in B-flat minor, Op 35, featuring the instantly recognizable funeral march ("Pray for the dead, and the dead will pray for you"). He followed with Berceuse in D flat major, Op 57, a form of lullaby with a rocking, repetitive base line, then launched into Polonaise héroïque in A flat major, Op 53. It was heroic indeed. There were two encores: Nocturne in D flat major, Op 27, no 2, and Scherzo No 3 in C sharp minor, Op 39. After several bows there was a tease of a third encore, but Pollini exited the stage to the audience's clearly audible disappointment.

Growing pains at the BSO

Andris Nelsons is a native of Riga, Latvia, and his first full weekend as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra showcased the core repertoire of his roots. German: he started the concert with Beethoven's Symphony No 8. Eastern European: the second item was the suite from Béla Bartók's pantomime, The Magic Mandarin. Russian: the conductor closed the evening with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6, 'Pathétique'.

Nelsons has a visceral style of conducting. The music dances through him, and his whole body becomes an expression of the score. At times he stabs with his baton like a sword; at other times puts the baton away and weaves the music with his fingers. For the quietest passages he will retreat to his rail and shield his face with his hands. The large gestures allow players to follow him with their peripheral vision and focus on the notes on the page. 

That said, tonight's concert showed some growing pains between the orchestra and conductor. A cello solo in the Beethoven was drowned by the horns. The Bartók was generally loud and didn't take advantage of all the textures of the score. The third movement of the Tchaikovsky opened with a tempo struggle between the strings and winds. Throughout the night there were more than a handful of false entrances, burbled attacks and wrong notes. 

The audience enthusiastically cheered the first two works. But as the low strings faded into nothingness in the final movement of the Pathétique there were a few stifled attempts at an ovation. Nelsons held the silence for fifteen seconds before releasing his baton for applause. This introspective gesture seemed at odds with his otherwise extrovert performance. Perhaps it will take some time for the audience and orchestra to read the new conductor's body language.