‘Revolución diamantina' luminous with the BSO

Boston Globe

28-02-2025

But those locals who want to hear a new orchestral piece with a pointed feminist message needn't leave town. Guerrero, who also had a hand in commissioning 'Her Story' as head of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and led it at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood in 2023, was returning to the BSO for the first time since then. The headlining piece this time was a concert performance of the harrowingly beautiful 'Revolución diamantina,' which was inspired by protests in Ortiz's native Mexico condemning violence against women.
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Ortiz, though an established composer internationally, is a relative newcomer to the BSO stage; her orchestral piece 'Kauyumari' appeared on a Concert for the City in 2024, and a handful of her chamber pieces have been performed at Tanglewood. She is directing this year's Festival of Contemporary Music at the Tanglewood Music Center, so there will be plenty of opportunity in the near future to hear her work, but as a symphony-length piece (and recently the winner of three Grammy Awards; one for the piece itself, two for its namesake album with the Los Angeles Philharmonic), it's a powerful artist's statement.
If you have already made up your mind that you don't like contemporary orchestral music, you probably won't like 'Revolución diamantina.' It offered no apologies for what it is; a demanding technical gauntlet for the orchestra and an emotional wringer for the audience. It's often gorgeous — one section swoons with ardor matching anything Rachmaninoff ever wrote — but given the context, never truly easy listening. The full ballet has never been staged, but the accompanying dramaturgy by Booker Prize-winner Cristina Rivera Garza was printed in the program book. Hopefully it won't be too long before a dance company takes on the task, but for concert performances like the BSO's, it would be helpful to have the titles of each 'scene' projected above the orchestra.
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Though the singers were amplified, the score treated them more like a section of the orchestra — there primarily for texture, only occasionally for text, and they did an admirable job with both tasks. The percussion section especially was put through their paces for the piece's full 45 minutes, dashing between instruments in the back corner of the stage. (The full list of equipment took up nine full lines in the program book, included 'river stones,' an anvil, and the Mexican slit log drum called the teponatzli.) The final movement slowly gathered power into a heavens-storming chorale of hope, with most of the orchestra and chorus united in solid solemnity while flutist Lorna McGhee's soaring solo pierced the sky.
Giancarlo Guerrero conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky's "Francesca da Rimini" at Symphony Hall on Thursday.
Robert Torres
The second half of the concert contained two shorter pieces by Tchaikovsky, which combined into an odd follow-up to the emotional battering ram that was 'Revolución.' The final piece, the Dante-inspired 'Francesca da Rimini,' had a loose surface thematic connection — Ortiz's piece as a reaction to violence against women, particularly intimate partner violence, while Francesca, allegedly based on a real contemporary of Dante, was murdered by her own husband when he discovered her affair with his brother; the poet depicted her and Paolo in the second circle of hell, condemned to whirl about in an eternal gale.
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However, 'Francesca' plausibly has more to do with its composer than its central character. Tchaikovsky was in a personal tempest of his own as he struggled with his own attraction to men and external pressure to marry a woman, which he did (disastrously) in 1877, the year after he wrote 'Francesca.' It's not hard to imagine he saw his own feelings of powerlessness reflected in Dante's damned souls. In the BSO's performance Thursday, the billowing chromatic gestures were powerful enough to sweep away any hopes of terra firma. Even as the tender central love theme took center stage, the timpani added an ominous undercurrent, signaling another barrage of brass and shrieking winds wasn't too far away.
The other Tchaikovsky piece, 'Variations on a Rococo Theme,' featuring cellist Alban Gerhardt, was charming, technically astounding, and placing it between 'Revolucion' and 'Francesca' had an effect comparable to eating a Snickers bar between bites of pickle. The cello showpiece sounded unusually bland in its expression, and that was only confirmed when Gerhard returned to the stage for an encore, the widely beloved prelude from Bach's Suite No. 1; those two minutes contained more sensitivity and dimension than the previous 20.
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
At Symphony Hall Feb. 27. Repeats March 1. 617-266-1200, www.bso.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at