The 107 musicians of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra endured their last season without even expecting to rehearse together. Deprived of performance opportunities but determined to prevail over the circumstances of the time and continue to progress as musicians, the orchestra members spent much of this otherwise quiet time at home studying. how to approach music that they might otherwise play. Orchestra members participated in weekly 2.5-hour Zoom sessions, approaching music as if each were the conductor. The idea was to develop a true understanding of how each individual part is vital in creating a larger sound. “You will all be seated at home in the first chair,” Benjamin Zander’s letter explained to the group. They studied Mahler’s 4^e in depth in many aspects, an entire session, for example, devoted to studying different recordings of sopranos to discover what makes the ideal singer for an imaginary interpretation of the final movement.

But Friday night at Symphony Hall, they did. Benjamin Zander led these 107 conductors and their chosen, now more hypothetical soprano, on an unexpected but fortuitous and brilliantly successful journey through this transparent and soloist symphony where individuals, more aware than ever since their studies of the collective context, have become so moving a.

The program, billed as a “moment of healing”, got off to a good start with Barber’s Adagio for strings. Unlike some tortured and languid interpretations (eg the nine minute version of Dudamel), this one was focused and intense. Simple and shameless, it seemed perfect for today’s environment. While it’s easy to get lost in the captivating individual sentences, it was well done to take a step back and recognize the larger architecture and dynamic control brought by Zander. It inevitably led to a unique destination.

Zander then explained that for Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 in D major, “Haffner,” the on-stage complement was more than double the size one would expect in a performance of a Mozart symphony because ‘none of the performers would want to miss Mozart and that there had been an occasional precedent in Mozart’s time for ensembles much larger than what was generally obtained. At the start of the music, it became clear that this would be the weakest part of the concert. Until the fourth movement, we heard less interaction between sections and lines than one would expect and little sense of restraint and color development, either in tempo or tone. dynamic. It often sounded like little more than a rehearsal where the main purpose was just to keep time. The large size of the set also made for the occasional mud; Mozart must be clean and sharp. In the last movement, however, the orchestra finally came to life. It was clear that they had spent most of their time preparing this section, probably because it is the most fun! Zander noted Mozart’s tempo instruction “as fast as possible,” and they seemed to really take that to heart.

The second half, or rather two-thirds, saw the main event, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G major, lasting almost an hour. It opens with the exact clarity and assurance that Mozart lacks. Zander regards the fourth more as chamber music (and indeed, a very convincing chamber arrangement exists) than as a conventional symphony; including many sections to dynamically transform smaller sets, the work only includes two fairly brief tutti. As the first movement progressed, the musicians kept opening up and developing a sound of their own. Each repetition of the initial thematic material proved to be significantly more convincing than the initial version. The second movement, which Zander describes as a “dance-macabre,” asked solo violin Eric Chen to replace his violin with a tuned scordatura, a high step, reminiscent of sinister street music. (The original name of the scherzo was “Freund Hein spielt auf”, which Mahler’s musicologist Deryck Cooke has loosely translated as “Death takes the violin”). The effect would have been stronger if the rest of the orchestra had sometimes shown a little more restraint in this movement, so that the lines of the solo violin might have “screamed” a little more. The third movement, which annotator Michael Steinberg and Zander called Mahler’s “finest slow movement”, has achieved true mastery. Certainly not having studied Mahler as in detail as the experts, I would have awarded this distinction to the famous Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony. Like this example, this music continually expands and evolves, but does so with a much more defined structure – a difficult feat. There the notes invade you in a way you get lost, but don’t particularly care. Here the movement goes just as (if not more) beautifully, and you don’t forget where you came from or lose sight of where you are going.

Zander “… had a crazy time searching the world for a soprano who matched the ideal collectively established during her studies,” eventually finding Sofia Fomina through her wonderful recording with the London Philharmonic. She came from Munich for eight glorious minutes in the final movement, which is built around the German folk song “Das himmlische Leben” portraying the idealized image of a child from paradise. The vocal part, supposed to embody innocence, could have come out a little more from the orchestral background like so many instrumental solos. What carried to the back of the room, thanks to perfect focus and chandelier, was a spectacular evocation of the wonder of a child with open eyes.

In the planned encore, Dvořák’s “Song to the Moon” Rusalka, Fomina shared her many diva gifts and effortlessly projected onto the orchestra, revealing the humanity of a water sprite and her longing for human love.

Tell her, oh, tell her, silver moon
That in my arms, I embrace him
Tell him he dreams of confusing me
Even if it’s only for a moment
Tell her in a dream to think of me
Even if just for a moment
Shine in reverie
Shine on him

And so she shone on us in a real blow theater.

The evening ended with many minutes of applause and exuberant stomping from the stage and the house, and too many reminders to count, making the energy and optimism in the air palpable. A year of preparing for something without any certainty of accomplishment had not been in vain, and hope for the future not only lasted, but also flourished.

Currently active in the financial world in San Francisco after obtaining a BS in Mathematics and Physics, and a BFA in Music in 2012, Nathaniel Eiseman designed this site in 2008.