For the opening of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra’s 2024-25 season on Sunday at Symphony Hall, conductor Benjamin Zander chose a wonderfully varied program calculated to display the ensemble’s strengths while also appealing to seasoned as well as new listeners. Young musicians aspiring to careers in top-rank orchestras need, of course, to be conversant with a wide range of music from different eras and countries, composed in different styles; consequently, one of the signal virtues of this concert was the orchestra’s versatility in addition to its customary technical accomplishment and tonal finesse.
Verdi’s La Forza del Destino is notably full of storm and stress, even by verismo opera standards, and the overture naturally forms a microcosm of these conflicts. In his introductory remarks Zander dedicated the performance—almost on the eve of Election Day—to this country and its hopes of living in harmony, noting that the overture progresses from despair, conflict, and fear of the unknown to a frenzy of joy. Conductor and players established a feeling of foreboding at the outset with arresting brass octaves (fate knocking on the door?) followed by a brooding, minor-mode theme starting in the strings’ lower register. The subsequent mournful woodwind melody, isolated and disconsolate, made a foil to the previous agitation—though Verdi masterfully retained the earlier brooding theme in an accompanying role. After a pregnant pause, the violins sang an ethereally hopeful tune (in the major mode for the first time); the discretion of the accompanying strings’ tremolos approached inaudibility, but the mood change was telling—while still the opening string theme lurked in the background. Later we heard another major-mode melody, a light-hearted dance, played by solo clarinet with whirling harp figures accompanying and gradually other instruments smoothly entering the texture. A striking highlight that caught my ear: the expressive brass chorale in dialogue with much faster string writing. The final section, now firmly anchored in the major, skillfully built up excitement with gradually increasing dynamics and an even faster tempo. Special plaudits go to the string players who handled with aplomb the work’s considerable technical demands even as they limned its many mood changes.
The “New World” Symphony of Dvořák also seemed particularly appropriate just ahead of the election, the culmination of a multi-month debate on the value of immigration, on whether immigrants are the sine qua non of American history and society. (In fact, Zander explained, the choice of music was serendipitous as it was the request of an exceptionally generous benefactor of the BPYO.) That the composer viewed America’s diversity as its strength seems clear, based on both this symphony and his earlier decision, after some initial reluctance, to travel to New York City in 1892 to head the National Conservatory of Music. Though the work does not lack the rustic Bohemian style of Dvořák’s previous symphonic works, it also incorporates themes evocative of African-American spirituals and Native American melodies. And while it is doubtless one of the great warhorses of the orchestral literature, it’s possible that for young musicians perhaps playing it for the first time, it might well be especially inspiring. In retrospect, I believe their playing, expertly guided by Zander, made me hear this “old chestnut” with fresh ears.
The first movement’s slow introduction atmospherically contrasted somber lower strings with shimmering high woodwinds, followed by the Allegro’s fanfare-like horn theme and its development. The composer gets a great deal of mileage from this tune and the secondary theme in the major, using different keys, tempos, and orchestrations; therefore, the transitions took on special importance and were enjoyable for being “organic” and natural. Additionally, the many “hairpins” (crescendi paired with diminuendi) were well judged and enhanced the emotional resonance.
The brass players intoned the Largo’s portentous chords with ideal balance and tonal beauty. The famous English horn solo (which later became the latter-day spiritual “Goin’ Home”) moved us with its simplicity and absence of affectation, Dvořák’s beautiful music here being a lily that needs no gilding. When the muted strings later whispered the same melody, the effect was equally touching. Woodwind themes in the tonic minor seemed to wander poignantly, searchingly. After a shift back to major, a playful staccato theme on the oboe grew quickly to a climax, leading to a reprise of the English horn solo: the player displayed rather amazing breath control. The violins’ final tapering-off ascent into celestial regions capped off this uncommonly affecting Largo.
The scherzo returned us to the terrestrial, with an imitative game between flute and clarinet that grew to a vehement Czech furiant played by the whole orchestra. As stirring as the fortissimo full-orchestra climax was, the strings did not quite achieve the crisp ensemble heard in the Verdi overture and the symphony’s first movement. In the trio section the passage with many trills in strings and woodwinds chuckled delightfully.
Stentorian brass, punctuated powerfully by the strings, opened the finale to electrifying effect. The main string tune, almost continuous sextuplets, also generated considerable excitement. Their later, quieter theme, however, was sometimes overshadowed by overly enthusiastic brass interjections. The revisiting of themes, often more than one simultaneously, from the first three movements forms the most striking feature of the last one. As annotator Steven Ledbetter’s notes put it: “we get the Czech Dvořák, the Americanized Dvořák, and even a strong whiff of Wagner . . . all stirred into a heady concoction.” If the previous movements introduced us to individual elements of America’s diverse makeup, the finale perhaps showed the possibility of their coexistence in one place: from the coda’s emphatic final chords emerged a quieter woodwind chorus like a benediction.
At first glance, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring might be an unexpected selection for a November concert, but again with a highly stressful election looming, it may well have been a canny choice. The composer, after all, does not depict a Western-style observance of spring, blissfully celebrating sprouting flowers and renewal of life. The primordial Russian perspective views (re)birth in its literal sense, paid for with attendant brutal upheavals, trauma, and sacrifice. Zander and his musicians made scrupulous observance of Stravinsky’s complex rhythms a through-line of this performance. In the introduction to Part I (The Adoration of the Earth), for instance, the solo bassoon seems entirely improvisatory but in fact is precisely notated in the score. As other instruments join in, depicting reawakening life, the rhythm takes on added coherence, somewhat preparing us for the “Augurs of Spring” section’s famous full-orchestra chords in relentless 8th notes but with an irregular pattern of accents. The careening writing of the Ritual of Abduction inspired more of a frisson due to the fine-tuned coordination of the ensemble. In this section, the Ritual of the Rival Tribes, and the Dance of the Earth the musicians amply displayed their virtuosity.
The weird but fascinating chords opening the introduction to Part II (The Sacrifice) made a fitting backdrop to the succeeding Mystic Circle of the Young Girls. Later, the selection of the sacrificial virgin arrived with eleven massive chords that led into the Glorification of the Chosen One with wild, ecstatic cries. Further on, the steady-treaded march of Ritual Action of the Ancestors bespoke a quiet authority turning at times to brutal power in the horns’ solo. Though a synopsis of the ballet’s action would not have gone amiss, Zander’s program notes focused almost wholly on the piano rolls of The Rite, made under the composer’s supervision in the 1920s—in particular the concluding Sacrificial Dance of the chosen virgin―noting that it “goes far faster in relation to the rest of the work than we ever hear it played now, even on Stravinsky’s own recordings.” In traditional performances, after the spectacular sections of Part I noted above, Part II can arguably come off as something of an anticlimax. Here the young instrumentalists rose to the stern technical challenges of Zander’s much faster tempo and provided a level of excitement at least equal to that of Part I. The stunning ending as the virgin dances herself to death earned an extended standing ovation, allowing Zander to return to center stage many times and give numerous solo and sectional bows to the members of this outstanding orchestra.
Geoffrey Wieting holds Bachelor’s degrees in organ and Latin from Oberlin College and a Master’s degree in collaborative piano from New England Conservatory. He is Organist of First Parish Church of Weston as well as a freelance organist, collaborative pianist and vocal coach. He sings with the Back Bay Chorale and serves on the Board of Directors of the Old West Organ Society.
All photos on this page by Hilary Scott
