Boston Classical Review

Mao Fujita performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra Thursday night. Photo: Robert Torres

There is, perhaps, no stranger ending to a major symphony than the closing bars of Jean Sibelius’s First: a fortississimo outburst, a sudden diminuendo, two chords, and the lights go out. The passage’s vibe is “very 20^th-century,” as Leonard Bernstein once put it: “If you don’t like it, go home.”

To judge from the cheers at Symphony Hall on Thursday night, though, local audiences aren’t put off by that concluding gesture anymore. Nor was there a huge rush for the exits. Instead, an attentive house—though not so packed on this raw, wet night as in the last couple of weeks—showered its love on the Boston Symphony Orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons.

This has certainly been an atypical spring residency for the conductor who, it was announced in early March, will not be renewed when his contract is up in 2027. While management remains tight-lipped about its reasoning, the ensuing firestorm of support for Nelsons has ensured that his latest series of concerts have turned into electrifying events. Thursday’s lineup of works by Outi Tarkiainen, Mozart, and Sibelius promised more of the same.

The night’s brightest fireworks arrived in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 courtesy of Mao Fujita. The Tokyo-born artist was making his BSO debut and, in the process, demonstrated that he is both a virtuoso and a musical poet (his encore of Liszt’s arrangement of Mozart’s Ave verum corpus reinforced the last point).

Across the concerto, Fujita showcased playing of pearly, singing clarity and well-balanced, full-bodied sonority. His articulations in the outer movements were vital and crisp—the finale was particularly joyous and springlike—and his cadenzas in those sections, even as they wandered somewhat unexpectedly into late-Romantic territory, were models of musical showmanship.

As they did earlier this season, the BSO delivered an accompaniment that leaned heavily into modern-instrument Mozart performance practice. Though there were some fine woodwind solos (and ensemble) in the opening movement, strings sounded stolid and rhythms tended to plod. The finale, though more successful in discreet moments, still veered blunt in bigger spots.

Yet in the middle came an Andante that combined light, soft, inward orchestral playing with dreamy, focused pianism. The results were transfixing, as if soloist and orchestra were competing to outdo one another for beauty and delicacy.

The Sibelius Symphony No. 1 that followed offered moments of similar intensity and, at times, gripping quietude. Completed in 1899, the score is the most conventional of the composer’s seven installments in the genre, though still quite distinctive, especially in terms of structure, sonority, and harmony.

Nelsons’ approach this week highlighted the music’s mix of earthy rhythms and impassioned lyricism. The thumping patterns and slithering bass lines in the first movement’s development emerged potently, as did that part’s widely spaced, melodic woodwind writing.

For sumptuousness and warmth, the orchestra’s command of Sibelius’s style left little to be desired. The slow movement, in particular, involved a rich tonal blend and careful attention to dynamics, while that section’s climactic duel between duple and triple meters was wonderfully woozy.

At the same time, a certain deliberateness intruded on parts of the night’s reading. Phrasing in the first movement sometimes felt stiff and the boisterous scherzo never fully locked in. Also, the finale’s fugato episodes lacked a degree of definition.

Yet the latter section’s soulful recitatives, cathartic songfulness, and overarching textural clarity resulted in some of the most exciting orchestral playing of the last few weeks. The last two chords sounded as brusque and strange as they should. On these merits, one anticipates that subsequent performances will smooth out most of Thursday’s hiccups.

More hearings might not be enough to salvage Tarkiainen’s Day Night Day, however. On first hearing, the number proved short and sweet—but, also, slight and forgettable. A BSO co-commission receiving its American premiere, the score is meant to evoke the Northern lights and ice of Finnish Lapland, in the process quoting a pair of Sámi melodies from that region.

Swirling, amorphous, seemingly trying to conjure the ghost of Sibelius’s Night Ride and Sunrise, Day Night Day is enigmatic, inoffensive stuff. But its generic, gestural language and short duration work at cross-purposes and the effort hardly leaves an impression. Despite this, Nelsons and the BSO turned in a secure, colorful performance of the five-minute-long ephemerality.

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

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