Jonathan Blumhofer
Beethoven’s Mass in C is the highlight. Would that the San Francisco Symphony’s performance of the Third Concerto had more electricity.
Kurt Masur leaves behind a complex legacy, one that’s not neatly (or easily) summed up by the caricature of a stern, conservative, Old World German maestro.
This is truly exciting, world-beating Beethoven, played with gusto and a kind of musical intelligence that you simply can’t take for granted.
Of course, it’s a tricky business to summarize a classical music scene as busy and wide as Boston’s.
For classical music recordings it has been a remarkably rich year, especially over its second half.
Andris Nelsons possesses a clear fondness for Slavic music and his Tchaikovsky performances in Boston have become can’t-miss events.
As a composer, Gunther Schuller’s legacy is complex and has yet to be settled. Sorting through it all will constitute a great, welcome adventure.
Andris Nelsons drew playing from the BSO that reveled in Alban Berg’s sense of color and musical drama.
The biggest takeaway from the evening was the superb quality of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra’s playing.
Classical Music Commentary: “Boulez est mort”
And yet, for all the violence of his youthful polemics and his unflinchingly-held beliefs, Pierre Boulez was neither demagogue nor ideologue.
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