Looks good on paper

The Boston Philharmonic closed their 2014-2015 season with three standards from the Romantic repertoire: the Overture to Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner, Cello Concerto no. 1 by Camille Saint-Saëns and Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. This program looked good on paper, and in fact it was excellent.

Conductor Benjamin Zander thrives on extroverted dramatic works, and he is fully engaged if there is some musical scholarship to reveal to the public. Previous successes include corrective interpretations of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth Symphonies and a fleet-footed Rite of Spring that followed Stravinsky's tempo markings.

Maestro Zander reconsidered a passage in the fifth movement of Symphonie Fantastique that is marked a whole note = 67 beats per minute. At this tempo everything is a blur. Based on the evidence of Franz Liszt's piano transcription of the work, Zander deduced that there is a notation error for what should be a half note = 67 beats, or half as fast. Now all the details of rhythm and texture come into focus. The conductor love to crow his bragging rights: "Of course, we're the first ones to actually play it at this tempo." And instead of sprinting to the end, the orchestra capered in a psychedelic rapture.

Young Boston cellist Jonah Ellsworth was the guest soloist for the Saint-Saëns concerto. BPO principal cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer was noticeably absent for this concert. Is it artistic courtesy (or jealousy) for a principal to step aside for a guest artist? Hmm.

The Boston Philharmonic bid farewell to one of their own, this being the final concert of Thomas Hill, principal clarinet for twenty-two years.

Wine report: White wedding / I thee Red

I was visiting my sister and stopped by Walmart, the mega-store, which in New Hampshire also has a beer and wine department. This is a novelty for Massachusetts shoppers. Walmart has a house label of wines, Oak Leaf, that sells for $2.97 a bottle. As I pondered the choices I heard a couple behind me wondering if they get some Oak Leaf for their reception. I was aghast. Who would serve $3 Walmart wine to their wedding guests? But then I considered that if you were having a typical catered affair with a choice of fish, chicken or prime rib, all you wanted was an inoffensive table wine to fill the glasses.

Inoffensive is the tricky part.

I picked up a few bottles to give them a try. The Shiraz was harsh, and the Merlot was silly. I gave the Chardonnay credit for boldly showing its fruit and oak. On my next visit to New Hampshire I stopped by Walmart again to try a few more varietals. The Oak Hill display had been ransacked, leaving only a few cases of Muscatel and White Zinfandel. Perhaps the young couple had hosted a huge reception with guests from multiple continents. I walked away.

The experience sparked a theme for the next Boston Office tasting. How would a super-budget wine stand up as a banquet offering? We tested the idea with Trader Joe's house brand, Charles Shaw, which sells for $2.99. I chose the Pinot grigio and Merlot because they seemed compatible with a variety of entrees, and I had seen some favorable reviews. Other tasters provided the comparison wines, keeping them under $15 dollars a bottle. The intent was to see if it was worth saving a hundred (or several hundred) dollars per case to put a passable wine on the table.

This was a blind tasting. I decanted six wines and labeled them A through F. I was the only one who knew which was which. Here's what we found, sampling the whites first.

Wine A was the Charles Shaw Pinot grigio. A fruity aroma greeted the nose; I found it balanced by a bitterness on the tongue. This wine had a dark amber color, and several tasters commented on the oaked, buttery flavor, reminding them of a Chardonnay. This selection had the fewest negative votes among the whites, but one taster called it "chicken-y".

Wine B was Kirkland, Costco's house label, selling for $6.99. This had the light green color you would expect of a Pinot grigio, but I was immediately struck by a bubble gum aroma, later pinpointed as Necco Banana Splits. The fans found the taste light and gentle, but the detractors were put off by a bitter aftertaste.

Wine C was Zenato, a single-vineyard Italian grigio selling for around $10. This got a shrug, not giving much on the nose, although someone described it as uriny. The fans found it cheese-friendly with a refreshing acidity; the foes called it metallic, or worse, bland.

On to the reds. They seemed to offer more personality than the whites.

Wine D was the Charles Shaw Merlot. I spent a long time trying to pin down the aroma. The best I could come up with was "new football". Other descriptions ranged from coffee to mustiness. The taste responses covered a wide spectrum, from "distinct and lovely" and "sweet, desserty" to "almost skunk" and "I ain't drinking no effing Merlot!" The color could only be described as purple.

Wine E was Dynamite Merlot, selling for around $10. I was almost blown backwards by a smell of Windex and a taste to match. Yet taste is subjective; several participants marked this as their favorite, loving the "dry fruit, cherry, slate", raving "delicious, awesome" and "yum!"

(One note about our tastings: we don't have a spit bucket; we finish what we pour. Legibility started to decline as we were into our fifth wine, hence this comment: "Smells good, tastes too [smartsy? smaltzy? ginptsy?]". Perhaps "smoky".)

Wine F was from Josh Cellars, $15. There were many favorable responses, admiring the cherry and dried fruit flavors. There was a comment on the appealing color, and I noted a chewy mouth feel. The haters were put off by a low-tide smell and smoky taste, and found the fruitiness pushing toward mulberry.

The tally: Tasters were instructed to circle their favorite choices on a ballot and cross out their least favorite. Within each varietal I arbitrarily assigned 5 points for each first-place vote, zero for the least favorite and 2 points for the default second choice, splitting one point each if there was no "least favorite" indication. I make no claims about scientific method, but I held aside my own ballot as a biased judge.

The results:

Pinot grigio
A, Charles Shaw – 28 points (33, adding my vote)
B, Kirkland – 34 points
C, Zenato – 24 points (26)

Merlot
D, Charles Shaw – 23 points (25)
E, Dynamite – 31 points
F, Josh Cellars – 30 points (35)

The judgment: Get a Costco membership for your white wine, but pay a little more for your red. If you figure in my vote for the Charles Shaw Pinot grigio, you would not embarrass yourself with a trip to Trader Joe's.

There were some crashers at our tasting, one being Dearly Beloved – I Thee Red, a California blend with a floral lacework skull on the label. Novelty wines can be a hazardous minefield, but this one was juicy and highly drinkable. It would be a suitable wedding gift to an edgy couple with a macabre sense of humor. Otherwise, definitely offensive.

Joe M. at the Boston Office makes his own Mead, and he brought in an apple and cinnamon based offering called Landfall. As with his previous Orange/Mango Mead, there is some dark alchemy that transforms the end product into something "other". I spent much time with my nose in the glass trying to pin down the aroma; a consultant and I finally arrived at Saddle Soap. The flavor was honeyed without being throat-chokingly cloying, and there was a touch of pruniness that evoked Sherry. In all, very quaffable.

In like a lion, out like a lamb

"In like a lion, out like a lamb" usually describes the month of March, but Boston's winter of 2015 has pushed that transformation into April. The record-breaking snowfall is finally disappearing, and crocuses have popped up only this first April weekend. The lion/lamb simile also applies to Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, describing this week's opening work, then expanding to the first half of the concert, then the concert as a whole, and finally broadening to the arc of the conductor's first season as music director.

The concert started with an orchestral scream. Looking down from the top balcony, I could see a giant crescendo mark drawn across the first page of the conductor's score:

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The Passacaglia from Dmitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is one of four interludes that allow the orchestra to amplify the emotional trajectory of the story. The anti-heroine has just poisoned her father-in-law, triggering her spiraling descent. The initial adrenaline rush can find no exit; the music keeps gnashing over a repeating baseline until finally collapsing with a whimper > .

Impressive, overwhelming, foursquare: these are the words that usually come to mind when I think of Ludwig van Beethoven. Imagine my delight when soloist Christian Tetzlaff joined the BSO in Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major. The work is downright ... well ... pretty. This has to be the most lyrical and delicate orchestral piece that Beethoven ever wrote. The poignancy of his plucked strings in the slow movement rivals French composers of 75 years later. Christian Tetzlaff played his own 3-page cadenza, which includes a passage for timpani accompaniment. Just plain fun.

The soloist treated us to an encore on Thursday's night, the Gavotte en rondeau from Bach's Violin Partita no. 3 in E major. It danced. I smiled.

The second half of the concert brought Shostakovich's Symphony no. 10 in E minor. Impressive, overwhelming, definitely not foursquare. What struck me most was the textures that Andris Nelsons got out of the orchestra. Yes, the second movement was a thumping rumpus, but elsewhere there were extended bassoon solos, a clarinet duet, flute and piccolo features. The quiet passages were softer and more detailed than I have heard this season, and Nelsons sheered off sudden outbursts with silences as powerful as the attacks.

For the first half of the season Nelsons seemed content to let the band rip, to test their lungs. The BSO is quite capable of a tremendous noise. Last week's Mahler was stunning, but there was a marked advancement this week: finesse, transparency, balance. Andris Nelsons has taken measure of the musicians, and now he is showing them to their best advantage. The BSO will repeat this Beethoven and Shostakovich program in a few weeks at New York's Carnegie Hall. It will be a distinguished calling card for the orchestra and its new music director.