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]