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Concert review
Blomstedt brings insight, relaxed lyricism to Brahms and Schubert with BSO

Herbert Blomstedt conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra Thursday night at Symphony Hall. Photo: Hilary Scott
“Age is an issue of mind over matter,” Mark Twain reportedly said. “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
Whether or not Herbert Blomstedt shares Twain’s philosophy, the 97-year-old maestro’s stage presence embodies it. His return to Symphony Hall on Thursday night was a case-in-point: a couple of concessions to longevity aside—conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra while seated and being assisted to and from the podium—Blomstedt the musician remains at the top of his game.
That much was clear from the downbeat of Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, a score that, curiously, Blomstedt led the orchestra in just six years ago. Like the prior time, there was an engaging naturalness to Thursday evening’s interpretation.
Nothing was rushed. If anything, the conductor enjoyed lingering over the little details, like the quiet bridge into the first movement’s development and the lovely oboe and clarinet solos in the Andante. Yet for all the flexibility and rhetorical awareness of his approach, the reading never sagged or lost its way.
Instead, it was firmly rooted in a strong sense of Brahmsian style, especially lyrical style. That, in turn, was grounded in a vital awareness of the score’s tight, motivic construction.
Indeed, Thursday’s Brahms was as unfussy, organic, and dramatically cogent as they come. All the subtle, inter-movement connections—the Andante’s resolution of the first movement’s unsettled introduction, the Allegretto’s recollection of the same’s menacing timpani/bass tread, the finale’s various relationships to figures heard earlier—spoke afresh.
As did the music’s sheer songfulness. There was a hymn-like quality to the night’s iterations of the Allegro’s second subject, not to mention the finale’s noble main theme. The Andante, though a bit texturally unkempt, offered no shortage of mellifluous fervency, especially in the soaring, culminating duet between the evening’s concertmaster Alexander Velinzon and principal horn Richard Sebring. Meantime, Blomstedt’s admirably flowing take on the third movement unfurled like a lied that never touched the ground.
This imperative to sing was, in fact, the story of the evening’s Brahms. While the music navigates all manner of turbulence, it reaches its triumphant conclusion in the form of a communal chorale. Whether or not an extra-musical application was intended, that moment arrived Thursday in a cathartic blaze.
The evening’s opener, Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 proved similarly vivifying. Completed in 1818, the score has languished among the composer’s symphonic efforts, though, after this week’s ingratiating traversal, it’s an open question as to why.
Granted, spots of it are choppy: the transition into the first movement’s coda is abrupt and the finale’s a touch long-winded. But the music’s strengths are considerable, not least its pert dialogues between woodwinds and strings.
On Thursday, Blomstedt’s take on this obscurity seemed to aim at marrying the lithe agility of the historically informed performance practice movement and the sonic heft of a modern symphony orchestra. By and large, he succeeded.
The first-movement introduction didn’t stint on weight, yet its fast section danced amenably. While the opening of the Andante was a model of supple, lilting energy, its closing combination of bristly and lyrical styles was beguilingly fresh.
In the lusty trio of the Scherzo, Schubert’s instrumental effects (held notes in the woodwinds sustaining attacks made by the larger ensemble) helped emphasize a rhythmic ambiguity that was worthy of Schumann—and just as playful.
Ultimately, it was impossible to resist the Sixth’s stylish sense of character. This may not be music that will save the world, one came away thinking, but hearing it from Blomstedt and the BSO makes living in it much more manageable.
The program will be repeated 1:30 p.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Hall. bso.org
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