Boston Classical Review

Herbert Blomstedt conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in music of Brahms Friday afternoon. Photo: Michael J. Lutch

New England might be in the grip of a winter with seemingly limitless reserves of snow and ice, but the Boston Symphony Orchestra took a decidedly autumnal view of things for Herbert Blomstedt’s return to Symphony Hall this weekend.

Despite the melancholy and nostalgia on offer in the conductor’s all-Brahms program, however, Friday afternoon’s concert proved anything but dour or sleepy. Quite the opposite: the 98-year-old Blomstedt’s account of the Hamburg-born master’s Symphony No. 4 was a picture of vitality, color, and style.

This was achieved, principally, by leaning into the music’s dancing impetus, an approach that’s not as far-fetched as it may seem: Brahms once joked to a friend that the Fourth was merely “a bunch of waltzes and polkas.” Though that descriptor was clearly facetious, Friday’s shapely, propulsive account allowed one to appreciate the gist of the composer’s sentiment.

The first two movements were outstandingly rich-toned and lean, modeling big dynamic contrasts and a noble sense of musical drama. In the first movement, the mysterious pianissimo “reveals” in its development and recapitulation sections were etched with feather-weight precision. Meantime, the Andante unfolded like a pavane: stately, grand, stoic.

Throughout, the BSO’s tonal blend evinced a mighty sense of Brahmsian style, a fact aided, no doubt, by Blomstedt’s practice of seating the violin sections across the podium from one another (instead of side-by-side, as is the orchestra’s typical habit). As a result, the symphony’s counterpoint was vigorously three-dimensional—the scherzo was particularly lively—and the strings’ hymn in the slow movement took on a specially luminous glow.

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

At the same time, the warmth of Blomstedt’s interpretation was tempered by a rhetorical and structural toughness that illuminated the expressive depths of this music.

That was made most powerfully manifest in the finale, whose depictions of order and turmoil emerged viscerally. In this context, the movement’s central, peaceful reminiscences were rightly touching: principal flute Lorna McGhee’s solos were beautifully shaped and the short horn-trombone anthem was resplendently balanced.

But this isn’t music that wallows in the past, no matter how enticing that prospect might appear. Instead, it faces the uncertainty of the present head-on. That the string pizzicatos leading into the coda sounded like gunshots was perhaps inadvertent; nevertheless, Blomstedt and the BSO’s drive to the double-bar—here Brahms actually does write a type of nightmarish waltz—was as thrilling as it was harrowing.

To preface the symphony, conductor and orchestra were joined by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (prepared by guest conductor Lisa Wong) for rare performances of the composer’s Schicksalslied and Nänie. Reflecting Brahms’s wide literary tastes—the former sets a text from Friedrich Hölderlin’s novel Hyperion while the latter adapts a poem by Schiller—they also anticipate the pessimist-realism that infuses his later output.

In the Schicksalslied, Blomstedt drew playing of terrific radiance and expansive beauty during the framing orchestral sections. At the same time, the stormy culmination of the work kicked up a ferocious, picturesque storm (Brahms’s text-painting of waves crashing on ledges came out with conspicuous immediacy).

Though the TFC’s German diction was periodically muddy, the group’s tonal blend, attention to dynamics, and textural clarity combined with the BSO’s often silky accompaniments to make a potent case for this largely neglected fare.

The pairing’s rendition of Nänie was similarly well-directed and urgent, marked by dancing woodwinds and majestic harp contributions (the latter were doubled, per Brahms’s request in the score). Again, the TFC’s disciplined ensemble focus ensured the stateliness, sweep, and shape of the music emerged strongly.

The program will be repeated 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Hall. bso.org

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