War overshadows Boston’s next season
NewsThe Boston Symphony has signalled a change of direction, shifting its programming to incorporate current events.
The Ukraine war dominates, with performances of Shostakovich’s Babi Yar Symphony, Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and Osvaldo Golijov’s ‘Falling Out of Time,’ based on David Grossman’s loss of his son to war.
Andris Nelsons, the Latvian music director, said he hoped the season would reflect ‘music’s power to touch our hearts and reveal the many stories and emotions that bring us together as a human family.’
What Ukraine needs are fighter jets, not performances of Babi Yar in Boston.
When I go to a concert, I don’t need or want to have the day’s news rehashed in music.
Can’t I get an hour just to myself, without having to relive everyone else’s trauma?
They’re playing Bach, Holst, Haydn, Bernstein, Mozart, Enescu, Mahler and Beethoven, and that just takes us up to the end of October. I’m sure there’s an hour to shut out the world somewhere in there. Although I’m sorry to report that Beethoven sometimes read the newspapers, so you might have to skip him.
You can have all the time to yourself that you want. Just stay home.
See how simple that was.
Babi Yar is underplayed. It’s one of my favorite Symphonies. The only time I heard a professional orchestra play it the bass baritone got sick and they didn’t have a substitute – in Montreal of all places. Last night the students performed it at Jordan Hall. I’m looking forward to Nelson’s performance. His Shostakovitch has always been brilliant.
Even the venerable BSO is going the woke route, with two consecutive weeks of music all by African-American composers. It is a shame that the Gorecki Third Symphony, one of the few classical pieces composed in the last half century that deserves to live on, is being pared with a new work by Julia Wolfe, commemorating the centennial of women’s right to vote in the United States. Her multi-media work, ‘Fire in My Mouth’, performed by the New York Philharmonic a few years ago, a commemoration and memorialization of the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire, in which many sweatshop workers, mostly female, lost their lives because of appalling working conditions, has the flavor of a piece of propaganda, despite its uplifting theme, that might be appropriate for performance in Pyongyang, based on what is available for streaming.
I enjoyed “Fire in My Mouth” very, very much when I saw it — and so did the full house, which gave it a long, exuberant ovation.
Granted, it was a Saturday night, so very few people there had to work the next day, but that was the first Lincoln Center concert I had been to in years at which I saw *no one* scrambling out of the hall during the applause in order to beat the crowd outside. Everyone stayed to cheer.
No Blomstedt!
The great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau programmed one composer at a time. He knew something about focus.
All BSO 2022-23 programs mix in some 20th or 21st century music, with only one exception, I think (all Wagner). No, thank you. I adore, say, Monteverdi and Schubert, but wouldn’t want to listen to both composers on the same night.
Considering all the advance planning that takes place in creating an Orchestra’s schedule isn’t it more likely that there is more happenstance than design in regards to the BSO’s schedule and world events?
“Babi Yar” was originally scheduled for the cancelled 2020-21 season. Considering that it’s the final entry in Nelson’s Shostakovitch cycle I expected it would be on next season’s schedule. I thought they might have plugged it into this season, but they mostly avoided choral works this year which turns out to have been a good bet since their recent unmasked
performance of Britten’s “War Requiem” became something of a super spreader event.
They cancelled the Janacek Glagolitic Mass for fears of covid. I wonder if we will ever get to hear unmasked singing again?
I also hope that we can once again safely hear unmasked singing, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
I don’t know if links to other sites are allowed here, but I’ll give it a try. Here’s an interesting article regarding the aftermath of Boston’s performance of the War Requiem.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/04/15/tanglewood-festial-chorus-boston-symphony-orchestra-covid
Also, for those who are interested. Here is a link to a pdf of the complete BSO schedule for next season.
https://app.box.com/s/9fdjk6j3lnohq9u96iaxz1wkj5q9obov
That does not look like Nelsons in the photo and no other conductor is mentioned in the text.
That is Stefan Asbury, who runs the conducting program at Tanglewood, the summer home of the BSO.
Orchestras that adopt woke programming need to watch what’s happening at Netflix. They are losing a significant percentage of their fan base because of their woke programming.
Baloney!
Netflix is losing subscribers because of rising costs, competition and the evolving marketplace for streaming services. It’s got nothing to do with “woke” programming.
And if you think the future of our symphony orchestras lies in pretending it’s still 1895 rather than engaging with the world in which we currently exist you’re delusional.
So now your smarter than Elon Musk and the economic experts.
Elon Musk?! Thanks for the laugh.