Winslow Townson, March 19 concert photo
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Boston Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA
In Andris Nelsons’s first week back with the Boston Symphony since the news that he isn’t being renewed as Music Director, would there be a reaction – be it positive, negative, or business as usual – apparent in the music-making? In the third of four performances of this Schumann/Tchaikovsky programme, the latter’s great Byron-inspired Manfred might give a clue, but beforehand Yunchan Lim put his transcendental technique to the service of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto, a poetic/shapely/romantic/stealthy reading of considerable musicianship and finesse, enhanced by a classy collaboration from the BSO and Nelsons, Lim adding a lucid Chopin A-minor Waltz, Opus 34/2. As for Tchaikovsky’s ambitious programmatic Symphony (composed between those numbered Four and Five), following the entrance of Nelsons and the BSO as a collective, to many cheers, an hour-long performance (the score uncut) of Byron’s dramatic poem ensued, of power, passion and personality, subtlety and sensitivity, too, superbly played, Tchaikovsky’s brilliant orchestration relished, from diamante violin-writing to powerhouse percussion via graceful Scherzo rhythms (woodwinds dancing deliciously) to a thrilling orgiastic final movement, the whole capped – even if not scripted as such by Byron – with a glorious releasing coda.
Last Friday…
I am unawere of the background of his dismissal
Life is strange when the man to be dismissed can produce such a well performed and received result.