Anna Handler, the orchestra’s Assistant Conductor, a German-Columbian musician, pianist and conductor made her BSO debut Saturday, August 16th. Before coming to Boston, she has already developed a striking record of achievement, conducting operas at the Salzburg Festival annually since 2022 and being named the Kapellmeister of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Assistant conductors at the Boston Symphony are usually chosen in pairs. Their principal responsibility is for one of them to sit in on all the orchestra rehearsals each week, both to serve as a second pair of ears for the conductor of the week and also to learn the details of the conductor’s reading, in order to take over the performance in the case of necessity. Each year they are given their own opportunity to rehearse and lead a BSO program. Saturday was Anna Handler’s first such opportunity.
Her virtues became quickly apparent in Brahms’s Tragic Overture; her experience became even more evident in in her leadership of the Schumann Fourth Symphony and in accompanying Augustin Hadelich in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Both halves concluded with standing ovations as extended as any I’ve heard this year.
The two strong downward strokes that open the Brahms overture and the contrasting volume of what followed made it clear that Handler knew how to control the sonority of the orchestra and which instrument or section could be most appropriately signaled throughout.
The Schumann symphony is a special problem. The composer was an uncertain conductor who didn’t always trust a particular instrument or section to play firmly when called upon to do so; as a result, Schumann often wrote passages with various instruments doubling the principal line, to ensure that someone would enter if he missed a cue. As a result, some of his scores make an overall gray effect, with too many colors muddled together (however effective the basic conception of the work might be. This is particularly the case with the D-Minor Symphony, the second that Schumann composed, though now known as the Fourth, because he undertook extensive rewriting a decade after its original composition. Over the years, some conductors have actually reorchestrated the work. That is perhaps overkill.
Anna Handler at Tanglewood (Hilary Scott photo)
Handler’s reading sounded bright and fresh throughout (even in the somber opening slow theme, which Schumann turns upside-down in a fast tempo in the third movement). Careful balancing of the sections, especially those with the most doubling, allowed the fundamental colors to appear more richly than one often hears from this composer. On top of that, the crispness and togetherness of the rhythm in the brilliant coda brought everyone to their feet for extended applause.
To the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in the second half Hadelich brought superb color and energy. The slightly reduced balanced perffectly with the soloist. Hadelich and Handler played against one another brilliantly. The orchestral colors—as always with Tchaikovsky, one of the best orchestrators of the time—allowed various solo orchestral instruments momentary duets with the solo violin in ravishing colors. At the end came extended cheers for both Hadelich and Handler, as well for the orchestral players who had contributed solo moments.
Hadelich silenced the applause by preparing to play an encore, which he did not identify. It was not a standard violin classic heard at such moments, though there were occasional chuckles from the audience when some listeners recognized the characteristic turns of country fiddle music, though greatly intensified in virtuosity. The encore was Hadelich’s own arrangement of “Wild Fiddler’s Rag” by Howard “Howdy” Ferguson, bluegrass Paganinified. Again, at the end, the audience cheered with delight. Hadelich went offstage and graciously brought back Anna Handler to allow both to receive the ongoing applause, with another recognition, too, of the full orchestra. All in all, a truly satisfied audience.
Steven Ledbetter is a freelance writer and lecturer on music. He got his BA from Pomona College and PhD from NYU in Musicology. He taught at Dartmouth College in the 1970s, then became program annotator at the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1997.
