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.