Giant wolfhounds roam Manhattan

New York is a city of Yorkshire terriers, so I was startled to see a pair Irish wolfhounds crossing Lincoln Center Plaza. Who would keep one of the largest breeds of dogs (let alone two of them) in Manhattan? These are unlikely apartment pets. The answer became clear in Act I, Scene 3 of the Metropolitan Opera's production of Anna Bolena. The dogs were part of King Henry VIII's hunting party. 

The back story: Henry ousted his first queen, Catherine of Aragon, to marry her lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. Now he is ousting Anne to marry her lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. After the opera ends this cycle will repeat three more times. 

Gaetano Donizetti wrote operas about three Tudor queens, and soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, currently singing Anne, will perform all three at the Met this season. In Roberto Devereux she becomes Henry and Anne's daughter, Elizabeth I, and in Maria Stuarda she plays Elizabeth's political rival (and one-time childhood friend), Mary, Queen of Scots. 

These roles require an imperious stage presence with enough vocal stamina and flexibility to handle the acrobatic florid passages. Radvanovsky has all that. Her specialty is a pianissimo that carries the huge Metropolitan theater, but I heard a little rasp around the edges. I hope these dramatic bel canto conquests are not shortening her career. 

There was luxury casting in the supporting roles: Ildar Abdrazakov had all the charm, menace and bass notes for Henry. Jamie Barton gave a sympathetic performance as Jane, Anne's unwilling rival. Tamara Mumford wore her trousers well as Smeaton. Stephen Costello, as Anne's former lover, Percy, was secure in all but the very upper limit of his role. But for me, the two strangled top notes did not detract from his otherwise nimble and shimmering voice. Special mention goes to director David McVicar for his straightforward storytelling that kept the action and set moving between scenes. 

The Russians conquer Boston

The Boston Symphony Orchestra kicked off its 2015-2016 season on Thursday night with a program of Russian masterpieces. The bookends were works by Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff, each composed in the 1940s, each showcasing various soloists within the orchestra.

Dmitri Shostakovich might seem like an unlikely curtain raiser, but his Symphony No. 9 is a compact work, with its five movements taking only 25 minutes. The abounding solo passages spotlighted the BSO's principal musicians, notably concertmaster Malcolm Lowe (playing on an endowed Stradivarius violin), Elizabeth Rowe (flute), John Ferrillo (oboe), William Hudgins (clarinet), Richard Svoboda (bassoon), James Sommerville (horn), Thomas Rolfs (trumpet) and Martha Babcock (associate principal cello). Boston is graced with a wealth of talent. Music director Andris Nelsons and the BSO have partnered with Deutsche Grammophon to produce a series called "Shostakovich Under Stalin's Shadow". The first CD of last year's performance of Symphony No. 10 was just released this summer.

Symphonic Dances, opus 45, is Sergei Rachmaninoff's final work, and he considered it "his finest composition". Like the Shostakovich 9th, it also features individual instruments, including an alto saxophone (played by Thomas Martin) within an extensive passage for the wind ensemble. Conductor Nelsons led a fine reading of all the orchestral colors, and he will repeat the work in the coming weeks with a different pairing: the Alexander Nevsky cantata by Sergei Prokofiev. I look forward to hearing the Dances again.

The centerpiece of the evening was Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. There was a pause while musicians left the stage and stage managers cleared a pathway to wheel out the Steinway grand piano. Most of the principal players got to rest for the concerto (after all, the focus was on the guest soloist), so many third- and fourth-chair alternates filled the ranks. Matbe the B team could have used more warmup time, because the beginning of the concerto was mushy: Pum-pum-pum-pahhh, bap, FHRP-pum-pum-pahhh... Check out a video of the opening bars from the BSO's Facebook page (a bit of the Symphonic Dances follows afterwards).

Andris Nelsons and Evgeny Kissin kicked off the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 135th Season tonight with an all-Russian program featuring a performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, Shostakovich's five-movement Symphony No. 9, and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. The Shostakovich is being recorded as part of a multi-year recording initiative with Deutsche Grammophon!
Posted by Boston Symphony Orchestra on Thursday, October 1, 2015

The soloist was Russian-born Evgeny Kissin, now a transplanted New Yorker. His performance of the Tchaikovsky was sure-fingered, but he couldn't obscure a sense of museum antiquity about the work, especially after the snappy Shostakovich. The piano writing has a lot of crashing octaves, which make for a large volume of sound, but not a lot of transparency and clarity. The pizzicato strings that open the second movement are a welcome respite. Regardless, when the last movement ended there was the most sustained ovation I have witnessed at Symphony Hall, and a gasping thrill went through the audience when Kissin sat down at the piano for an encore. He played Tchaikovsky's Meditation, which again had an air of fusty romanticism about it. That said, the piece ends with an extended right-hand trill while the left hand spins out the closing melody, and Kissin executed it masterfully.