Boston Classical Review

Anna Handler conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra Thursday night. Photo: Robert Torres

Artistic inspiration can come from the most unexpected places.

Take Gabriella Smith’s Bioluminescence Chaconne, which owes its genesis to a snorkeling excursion the composer took as part of a marine biology program she participated in in Southern California. The opening item on the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Thursday night concert with assistant conductor Anna Handler, the Berkeley native’s 13-minute-long score left an outsized impression—and not only on account of its singular backstory.

Granted, this chaconne sounds nothing like what its title suggests: there’s no obviously recurring bass line or clearly-delineated sequence of variations on offer, a la Bach and Brahms. Neither are any intimations of formal stateliness present.

Instead, gesture and atmosphere take pride of place. Swirling woodwind arpeggios keow like gulls. Yawping brasses evoke whale songs and the echoes of cavernous depths. String textures are constantly on the move, sometimes dense as an ocean mist, other times shimmering like heat waves rising off pavement. A resonant percussion section adds splashes of color and, periodically, something approaching a rhythmic pulse.

All of these moving parts hold together with an unerring feeling of rightness. Indeed, this is music that knows exactly how long it needs to take to convey its point before moving on, contentedly, to the next thing. And one hardly need be aware of Smith’s work as a climate activist to appreciate the natural element present in Bioluminescence Chaconne: the score sounds like a day spent hiking in the Pacific Northwest or wandering along the Oregon coast, teeming with richness, complexity, variety, and menace. At the same time, it’s beguilingly beautiful.

Handler drew a performance from the orchestra that was richly colored and well-balanced. There was whimsy and wonder to be had in the music’s absorbingly delicate moments. At the same time, the Chaconne’s cacophonous apex proved impressively lucid.

Similar results obtained in the night’s biggest offering, a 45-minute-long suite Handler cobbled together from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Surprisingly, before this week, the BSO hadn’t presented music from this ballet on a subscription series since Seiji Ozawa led (and recorded) the whole work in 1978. Though dynamics in the Introduction didn’t always come down enough and there were some blatting trumpets in the Act 1 waltz, any questions of residual rustiness were quickly resolved.

To be sure, Thursday’s performance was a reading of character and spirit. Collectively, the BSO, which netted a pair of Grammy Awards last Sunday, was in robust form and their exuberant take on the Act 3 Czardas and snappy account of the “Danse espagnole” felt akin to victory laps.

So did principal trumpeter Tom Rolfs’ swaggering solos during the “Danse napolitaine,” which glowed with the brilliance of the Mediterranean sun. Additional solos from principal harpist Jessica Zhou, concertmaster Nathan Cole, and principal cellist Blaise Déjardin were likewise stylish.

From the podium, Handler demonstrated an excellent command of pacing and grasp of musical drama. Transitions within individual numbers were navigated with assurance and the natural urgency of the musical line always came through, nowhere more impressively than in the grippingly directed and sweepingly impassioned Act 4 finale.

Unfortunately, those same qualities didn’t apply to the pedestrian account of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in E-flat that came between the Tchaikovsky and Smith items.

The canon’s only major concerto for violin and viola, this 1781 effort showcases the composer coming into his full stylistic maturity with one of his favorite instruments in tow (Mozart particularly loved to play the viola). The writing is outstandingly idiomatic, treating both soloists as equals while providing them spades of great tunes and no shortage of late-18^th-century instrumental pyrotechnics—including, at the end of the finale, a device known as the “Mannheim Rocket.”

Alas, Thursday’s firework was a dud.

Not that the night’s soloists, BSO concertmaster Cole and principal violist Steven Ansell, were technically deficient: they had all the notes in hand. What they lacked were the necessary sparks of charisma and chemistry.

Nathan Cole and Steven Ansell performed Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante Thursday night. Photo: Robert Torres

Thursday’s account felt proper and straightjacketed to a fault, Ansell not always projecting enough and Cole’s tone in the first movement emerging a bit clipped. The violinist’s sound improved in later sections—the sweetness of his instrument fit the Andante’s lyricism well and the brightness of his upper register cut a fine figure in the Presto. Though the duo made lovely work of the middle movement’s cadenza, they ultimately seemed to be playing at each other rather than with each other. Especially in such conversational music, such a tack is self-defeating.

Not that the BSO’s big tone and lack of textural definition in the accompaniment helped matters. Modern-instrument Mozart can be a wonderful thing, but in order to come off it needs to be crisper and more focused than it was on Thursday, especially in the outer movements. That said, Handler drew some sensitive playing from the ensemble during the Andante, where the quiet spots stood out in their concentrated intensity.

The program will be repeated 1:30 p.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Hall. bso.org

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