A show of unity with Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Festival Chorus

Boston Globe

28-03-2025

The program's focus on the ensemble as a whole was palpable even before the orchestra played a single note. In most American orchestras, including the BSO, musicians tend to take their seats on their own, individually warming up on stage or quietly talking with their colleagues before the tuning note signals everyone to hush. However, the small 'Tabula Rasa' chamber orchestra of strings and prepared piano evidently tuned backstage before emerging from the wings together with Slobodeniouk, Lin, and Velinzon, with no separate pre-piece applause for conductor or soloists. If that was a way to grab the audience's attention and minimize chatter going into the whirlwind of 'Tabula Rasa,' it worked. Lin and Velinzon attacked the piercing first note, an A played several octaves apart; during the weighty seconds of silence that followed, you could hear your neighbors breathing.
The first movement of 'Tabula Rasa' is called 'Ludus,' Latin for 'game,' but playful is the last descriptor I'd use. Mesmerizing, perhaps 'apocalyptic,' it recalled Yeats's poem 'The Second Coming' in a way as Slobodeniouk guided the orchestra through several ever-intensifying, expanding gyres of variations. Each statement was separated from the next by Vytas Baksys's muted, bell-like intonations on the prepared piano, until at last the center could not hold, and orchestra and soloists rose to the shattering cascade of arpeggios that led to the extended final chord. The solo violin parts often echo each other nearly note for note, and in doing so call to attention the differences between the players; here, Velinzon's tone was temperate and matter-of-fact while Lin's was crisper and mournful.
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'Silentium,' the longer second movement, was ominous and implacable, rife with precise harmonies that could be sonic pitfalls for a less attuned orchestra, but not this BSO; the slow but steady forward motion conjured images of Yeats's beast slouching toward Bethlehem. After the final descent, with the melody passed downward through the sections to one single double bass, Slobodeniouk kept on conducting silence for several measures, unwilling (rightfully so) to let the world in until he said as much by slowly lowering his hand.
Dima Slobodeniouk conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra with violinists Alexander Velinzon and Lucia Lin in Arvo Pärt's "Tabula Rasa" on Thursday.
Hilary Scott
With the 'Requiem,' the Tanglewood Festival Chorus gave a stunning and profound display of unity. Their quality of performance has been on a distinct upswing lately, and the fruits of their work showed in the precise intonation in the 'Kyrie,' explosive dynamic variation in the 'Dies Irae,' and elegant phrasing in the 'Lacrimosa' — staples of the choral repertoire where rough patches tend to make themselves visible. The tenor parts of the 'Requiem' choral book can be especially punishing, and the TFC tenors deftly shouldered the demands, letting their high notes bloom.
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Swanson and Amereau made fine showings in their BSO subscription debuts. Morley, a BSO veteran who brings her 'Rose in Bloom'
has
he sung this piece?)
Slobodeniouk only made his BSO debut in 2018, but since then he's led around a dozen programs at Tanglewood and Symphony Hall. Next week's wartime program of Hailstork, Stravinsky, and Elgar makes one more for the Finnish conductor, who previously held positions at the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia. He's here often enough that the BSO may as well give him some kind of title; I certainly wouldn't object, and the fact that he keeps getting invited back for multi-program engagements in both venues suggests the musicians might not have an issue with it, either. This hobby pilot knows how to fly the BSO.
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
At Symphony Hall, March 27. Repeats March 29. 617-266-1200,
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