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Boston Globe
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
BFO founders on a mission to make classical music accessible to all
Brown, 32, is BFO's executive director and principal clarinetist. Wang, 30, is artistic director and conductor. Alyssa Wang, artistic director and conductor of Boston Festival Orchestra, in the Boston Atheneaum. Wang is also a composer, and she will conduct the BFO performing one of her pieces in July. (Pat Greenhouse/ The Boston Globe Staff) Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff The BFO takes advantage of the city's summer classical music lull – that's when the Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The programming syncs with the Athenaeum's ' Advertisement 'If we can open a door for them to be hearing what we hear,' she said, 'then their world expands.' Where to find them : Originally from : Brown grew up in Portland, Maine, and Wang in Danville, Calif. Boston Festival Orchestra artistic director Alyssa Wang, left, and executive director Nicholas Brown at the Boston Atheneaum's front door. (Pat Greenhouse/ The Boston Globe Staff) Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Live in : Wang moves from Roslindale to Cambridge after the June 12 concert. Brown lives in Brockton. Making a living : They supplement their BFO work with freelance gigs. Advertisement Studio : 'There is a large space issue in Boston for orchestras,' said Brown. The BFO has rehearsed at How they started : Wang picked up the violin at six 'and never stopped,' she said. Becoming a conductor, she added, felt like a natural extension of playing violin. Brown's parents bought him a clarinet at BJ's Wholesale Club when he was 11. 'We opened it up– it's in this strange foam orange case – and I have never seen another one like it. It had two bottom joints,' Brown said. 'I was like, 'I don't know how to play the clarinet, but this doesn't feel right.'' It was a manufacturer's error. Boston Festival Orchestra executive director and principal clarinetist Nicholas Brown in the Boston Atheneaum. (Pat Greenhouse/ The Boston Globe Staff) Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff What they make : 'The BFO makes experiences,' Wang said, ' music experiences, rooted in the shared humanity we have when we allow art to bring us together.' How they work : 'Leading up to the summer concerts, I'm a ball of anxious energy,' Brown said. ''When is the stage crew going to be here? Wait, I have to go set up the box office table.' And every time, she reminds me, 'This is the easy part.'' The hard part is the rest of the year: quarterly reports, fundraising, finding venues, musicians, and contractors. 'We've spent months trying to sell tickets, literally standing on street corners passing out flyers, which we have done for years,' Wang said. 'It's as grassroots as it can possibly get.' 'I think if we didn't have a really efficient working partnership, it would make everything impossible,' she added. Advice for musicians : 'Artists can have very singular and solitary lives,' Brown said. 'Don't be afraid to ask for help in any and every capacity.' Advertisement Boston Festival Orchestra's Alyssa Wang and Nicholas Brown outside the Boston Atheneaum. The Boston Festival Orchestra will stages a chamber concert in the space in June. (Pat Greenhouse/ The Boston Globe Staff) Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
The Guardian
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Levit/Budapest Festival Orchestra/Fischer review – edgy Prokofiev baffles and compels
Concerts by Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra are always a little idiosyncratic – remember when playing Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony meant them sharing the RFH stage with a tree? – and this all-Prokofiev programme had its own subtle yet distinctive stamp. It started with the Overture on Hebrew Themes. Fischer had Ákos Ács, the BFO's principal clarinettist, standing out front as if it were a concerto – which it isn't, but the clarinet is the guiding spirit of the piece, leading the klezmer melodies on which it's based. Ács was a mercurial presence – almost dancing with Fischer in the centre, then shuffling over among the strings as if to hide when he wasn't in the musical spotlight, but as engaging and virtuosic as a soloist in the whirling fast music. With Ács back in his seat, Fischer and the pianist Igor Levit took Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No 2 and made this strange, colossal work sound more baffling and compelling than ever. The orchestra oozed in underneath Levit's first melody and from then on the first movement's music slipped artfully in and out of focus, the orchestra not so much beautiful as eerily glutinous. Levit built his big solo passage to a peak of forceful intensity; then, in the tiny second movement, he kept the piano motoring deftly on, as if impervious to the orchestra hurtling beside it. The mechanical feeling spread to the third movement, which began with almost inhuman stomping but cradled a little swaying dance at its centre. The last movement brought grand romantic sweep – finally, the stuff big piano concertos are made of, hard won. Levit's encore, Schumann's Der Dichter Spricht, was an introspective and deeply felt contrast, its spell unbroken despite throbs of static from a malfunctioning speaker high above. After the interval, it was all about storytelling. A selection from the ballet Cinderella – Fischer our grandfatherly narrator – found the orchestra on more relaxed form, catching the music's colourful, occasionally edgy charm. This continued into their encore, the Gavotte from the Classical Symphony: a dance that 'starts young and ends old', as Fischer put it. If it ended steadier than it began, it lost none of its spark.
