Boston Classical Review

Andris Nelsons acknowledges the audience ovation at the end of the Boston Symphony Orchestra concert Thursday night at Symphony Hall. Photo: Winslow Townson

A house divided against itself cannot stand—but it can try to present a united front, at least for one night.

So it happened that, less than two weeks after the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s board of trustees and president/CEO Chad Smith announced that Andris Nelsons would not be renewed as music director when his contract expires next year, the Latvian maestro returned to Symphony Hall to kick off his spring residency.

On Thursday, he was joined by about 2,000 of his loudest friends and supporters. Mixed among them was a noticeable contingent from the orchestra’s administrative staff, seemingly on hand to project an air of stability and normalcy.

Be that as it may, the evening belonged to Nelsons and the BSO. By all accounts, the musicians were blindsided by management’s announcement—not notified beforehand about their conductor’s termination—and, in a demonstration of solidarity, all wore red flowers and came out onstage as a collective, in the European style. The night’s audience gave them a standing ovation and provided even lustier cheers when Nelsons emerged with the night’s soloist, Yunchan Lim.

Such clamor isn’t unusual for the 21-year-old Korean pianist to garner on his own (he turns 22 on Friday), and if Lim was bothered to share the adulation, it hardly showed. Instead, he, Nelsons, and the orchestra launched into a highly poetic traversal of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto.

Written between 1841 and 1845, the score ranks among the canon’s most satisfying solo vehicles, one whose virtuosity is geared as much towards keyboardists’ musical intellect as their technical dexterity. As such, it made an impressive showcase for Lim.

His account was invitingly focused, in part because of the pianist’s total command of phrasing, color, and dynamics. Even more fundamental to his interpretation’s success, though, was Lim’s clear grasp of the musical line and the soloist’s relationship to it.

As a result, the music’s bold, cascading strokes—especially in the first movement—came over with becoming clarity and direction. Little details, too, like the finale’s playful mordants, popped, and the music’s shifts of temperamental characters emerged strongly.

Indeed, there was never a question that things were headed in a right direction, even as Lim’s playing was hardly predictable, sometimes turning on a dime from heroic to inward. Instead, there was an improvisatory rightness that emerged from the night’s reading.

Yunchan Lim performed Schumann’s Piano Concerto Thursday night with Andris Nelsons and the BSO. Photo: Winslow Townson

Nelsons and the BSO provided an accompaniment of unexpected ductility, one that was consistently well-balanced and responsive to Lim’s playing. The Intermezzo, with its soulful lyricism and resonant woodwind blend, both allowed the orchestra to sing and functioned as a striking canvas for the pianist to glide over—or, occasionally, dig into.

Lim followed the Schumann with a hazy, dreamy encore of Chopin’s Waltz in A minor.

Poetry of a more explicit variety came after intermission in the form of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony. Inspired by Byron’s semi-autobiographical 1817 “dramatic poem,” the 1885 score fuses the Russian master’s mature symphonic style with his singular sense of sonority and drama.

It’s also one of the season’s true rarities: the BSO has only presented Manfred five times since 1969 (most recently in 2008). But Nelsons is a known quantity in this music, having made an excellent recording of the work in Birmingham.

Thursday’s rendition ranked among the better things he’s done in his tenure in Boston. Rich, well-blended, purposefully played, this was a reading that made one reassess Tchaikovsky’s grim verdict (to his publisher) that his opus was only worth hearing once every decade or so.

To be sure, the music’s brooding and stormy passagework came over with force and intensity. Though the finale’s bacchanal took some time to find its footing, it eventually did and that section’s oft-derided fugue was crisp and smart. Despite its triteness, the BSO dispatched the symphony’s uplifting coda radiantly.

In the Vivace’s depiction of Alpine waterfalls, woodwind dovetails were brilliantly matched and Nelsons made some surprising, but successful, feints towards Mahlerian rusticity during the Trio. The third-movement pastorale, too, was a model of gracious warmth and sweeping beauty. Throughout, the orchestra’s tonal blend was outstanding, its balances navigated with thoughtfulness and care.

Afterwards, the audience unleashed a thunderous ovation that was joined by the orchestra and, eventually, Nelsons crowned his night with a solo bow.

The program will be repeated 1:30 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday at Symphony Hall. bso.org

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