The Broken Baton

Charles Dutoit accused of sexual misconduct, loses major conducting jobs.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit stands accused of four separate incidents of sexual misconduct.

In a detailed and harrowing story in the Associated Press, three opera singers and an orchestra musician recalled sexual advances and assaults by Mr. Dutoit. The story, by Jocelyn Gecker, shines light on four unrelated incidents. All involved the Swiss maestro. In response to the story, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and New York Philharmonic cut their ties with the 81-year-old Swiss maestro.

Baton, Baton, Who's Got the Baton?

Exploring podium possibilities at The Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul J.  Pelkonen

Call it a comeback: James Levine's return to the Met podium in 2013.
Photo by Jonathan Tichler, © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

A pair of stories published by the Arts section of the New York Times earlier this month have offered some much-needed insight into the conducting situation at the Metropolitan Opera. The articles, by Michael Cooper and Zachary Woolfe, also fueled Internet speculation as to the artistic future of that great institution, which will announce the 2016-17 season later this month.

Big Changes for Big Orchestra

Alan Gilbert to step down from the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Alan Gilbert will step down as music director of the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2014 The New York Philharmonic. 

The New York Philharmonic sent an earthquake through the world of classical music today when it announced that Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic and the first New York native to occupy that position will step down in the summer of 2017.

The Superconductor Interview: Jacques Lacombe

A Q & A with the leader of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Jacques Lacombe.
Photo by Fred Stucker © 2014 New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

Jacques Lacombe is always in motion. The energetic French Canadian conductor is in his penultimate year leading the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Garden State's most significant professional ensemble in a bold season that ranges from rare works by New Jersey-born composers to a deep exploration of Shakespeare as an inspiration for 20th century composers. The orchestra is also getting ready to release a new recording to join its thunderous Carmina Burana. Things are looking up.

The NJSO is unique in that it is an orchestra that is effectively "on tour" for most of its season, playing programs in Newark, Bergen, New Brunswick, Princeton and even Red Bank. But their home is still Newark, at the stately, modern New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) right downtown on Center Street.

In a telephone interview with Superconductor, Mr. Lacombe discussed the benefits and challenges of his position, and how working out of Newark, New Jersey might be better than you think.

Ten Signs You're a Classical Music Geek

A handy guide from your friends at Superconductor.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Another sign: you know which conductor Bugs Bunny is making fun of here.
Image by Chuck Jones from Long-Haired Hare © 1948 Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Classical music geeks are an uncommon lot. Some can tell two different pianists apart just by listening or rattle off the key signatures of a composer's symphonies the way some people know football rosters.
It takes a special kind of devotion to love, really love classical music, and we thought the following list would serve as a little Valentine to the dedicated as we stand upon the brink of another concert season.

White Smoke Over Huntington Avenue

Andris Nelsons to take over Boston Symphony Orchestra.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Andris Nelsons is the new Music Director at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Photo by Stu Rosner © 2011 Boston Symphony Orchestra.

There's a new sheriff in Boston.

The board of the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced today that Andris Nelsons will be the ensemble's new Music Director, filling a vacancy at one of America's "big five" orchestras. The post has been empty since James Levine's resignation in 2011.

Obituary: Sir Colin Davis (1927-2013)

Acclaimed British conductor known for recordings and versatility.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sir Colin Davis (1927-2013.) Photo by Chris Lee.

Sir Colin Davis, the English conductor and longtime president of the London Symphony Orchestra died today after an illness. He was 85.

An acclaimed conductor and recording artist with a vast repertory, Sir Colin enjoyed a 50 year association with the LSO, serving as principal conductor for ten years before becoming its president. His career paralleled the rise and fall of the classical music recording industry, and its subsequent reinvention with the launch of LSO Live, the British orchestra's small-scale private record label.

Concert Review: Checking the Baggage

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Mahler's Ninth. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen. Photo by Mat Hennek © Deutsche Grammophon

It's not every day that a familiar conductor can present a well-known and well-loved repertory symphony in such a way that the listener hears it with fresh ears. But that's exactly what happened Sunday at Avery Fisher Hall, when Finnish composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Philharmonia Orchestra in Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

No other symphony has the baggage of the Mahler Ninth. It's the composer's last completed work. Mahler did not live to hear it played. And the opening, descending dotted rhythm phrase that forms the motto of the entire 90-minute symphony was associated (by Leonard Bernstein, no less) as representing the composer's own damaged, faltering heart.

That's quite a legacy. However, in performing ths symphony on Sunday night, Mr. Salonen chose to lay sentiment aside. He took a clear, assured approach which offered the audience new inroads into the mysteries of these four strange movements. Throughout, this performance had a clarity of texture in the strings. The Philharmonia horns sounded noble and mournful, but not over-wrought.

Concert Review: Remastering the Romantics

Pablo Heras-Casado conducts the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Pablo Heras-Casado demonstrates his ninja podium technique.
Photo by Jean-François Leclerq © 2011 PabloHerasCasado.com

Thursday night's concert at Mostly Mozart built a bridge between the instruments of the 18th century and the early Romanticism of the 19th. Under the baton of Pablo Heras-Casado, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra offered a program of Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn--conventional composers given new life through the use of period instruments.

The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra is celebrating its silver anniversary this year. Founded by music students in this university town near the Black Forest, this group's choice of archaic instruments seems somehow in keeping with the medieval, cobbled streets of their home city. Wooden flutes, natural horns, and a crisp, refreshing approach to music by Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn made for an entertaining addition to the usual Mostly Mozart schedule.

The program opened with Schubert's light-hearted Third Symphony. The characteristic orchestrations and long melodic lines that characterize this composer sounded fresh and new played by the Freiburgers, as if thick coatings of linseed oil were suddenly scraped from a masterwork of art. The music sprang with robust, Romantic life, from the slow, thoughtful introduction to the forceful Allegro with its complex clarinet part.

Pierre Boulez Nixes BBC Proms

Composer will not conduct his Le marteau sans maître.

Composer and conductor Pierre Boulez.

A recent report on Norman Lebrecht's Slipped Disc revealed that Pierre Boulez, one of the most important conductors and composers still active on the international classical music circuit, has been forced to withdraw from this year's BBC Proms He is unable to fly to the United Kingdom due to recent eye surgery.

Francis Xavier-Roth will take his place on the podium, leading Boulez' iconic Le marteau sans maître ("The Hammer without a Master") on July 26. Other concerts, featuring Boulez' experimental music paired with Beethoven symphonies, will be conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Celibidache Conducts Bruckner

Symphony No. 7, live from Tokyo.

The mystic Sergiu Celibidache.

Hi folks. Thought I'd share some video footage from Tokyo, 1990 of the masterful Sergiu Celibidache conducting Bruckner's Seventh symphony. This performance features the Munich Philharmonic. Since "Celi" (as he was known), disdained the recording process and did not authorize his live performances for release during his lifetime, this performance is a posthumous release from Sony Classical.

The first of the final triptych of Bruckner symphonies, the Seventh was written following the death of Richard Wagner. The second movement, written as a tribute to Bruckner's friend and fellow composer, is the first movement in one of Bruckner's symphonies to incorporate Wagner tubas. Like most interpretations of this composer by this particular conductor, it's really beautiful and incredibly slow.

Enjoy.

Concert Review: Taking the Fifth

Herbert Blomstedt conducts the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul Pelkonen

(Ed. Note: Superconductor reviews usually appear within 24 hours of attending a concert. Since I came down sick on Saturday afternoon, it's running now. Thanks for your patience.--P)

Conductor Herbert Blomstedt.
Photo by R. J. Muni.

The New York Philharmonic welcomed  Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt back to the podium of Avery Fisher Hall last week for a stellar program of Mozart and Tchaikovsky. 

A longtime presence at the San Francisco Symphony (where he served as music director for a decade), Mr. Blomstedt was born in the U.S. but grew up in Sweden. Now 85, his distinguished podium style features elegant, arching lyric lines and a brisk, business-like approach to making music. 

The concert opened with Mozart's Jeunehomme Concerto, led with a fine balance by soloist Garrick Ohlsson. Mr. Ohlsson, who looks more like a retired NFL tight end than an international concert pianist, played this music with a light touch that belied his big frame. 

Through the three movements, Mr. Ohlsson's big hands moved agilely, drawing out the playful aspects of the 21-year old Mozart's writing as well as the serious harmonic ideas that the composer would explore in operas like Idomeneo. Whether drawing sweet phrases in the slow movement or dazzling listeners with technical runs and arpeggiated figures in the finale, Mr. Ohlsson made the whole concerto look deceptively easy.

The Tchaikovsky Fifth stands at the center of the composer's late tryptich--a fate-driven work that draws inspiration from Beethoven as well as the composer's own lyric Russian style. It is also the most determinedly optimistic of these last three symphonies, standing between the tragic Fourth and the suicide note of the Pathetique.

Happily, this symphony is perfectly suited to the New York Philharmonic's strengths, a big, tempestuous work grounded around a motto theme. Sturdy brass playing--another specialty of this orchestra--is required. To all this, Mr. Blomstedt contributed propulsion, making the powerful motto theme dance where other conductors simply power ahead.

Mr. Blomstedt's leadership, expressive and vigorous without the benefit of a score, underlined the crucial relationship between the four movements of this symphony. In the Adagio, with its lonely horn-call that leads up to a huge climax, and in the courtly, almost rococo dance movement, the conductor underlined reappearance of the "motto" theme, showing the audience the coherent structure that Tchaikovsky was trying to achieve.

The conductor took an energetic approach to the finale, driving that famous march rhythm forward with a relentless, propulsive drive. Mr. Blomstedt also took the brief pause right before the coda very quickly. Some conductors pause too long, and an uninformed audience applauds too early. This performance brooked no such interruptions, ending in a powerful blaze of sound. 

At the Bust of Gustav Mahler

A brief encounter at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Gustav Mahler by A. Rodin.
Photo from the Metropolitan Museum of Art site.

It happened in front of the bust of Gustav Mahler. 

I was in the Modern Art wing of the Metropolitan Museum, spending an afternoon (following today's noontime press conference announcing the Met's concert and lecture  schedule for 2012) traipsing around the museum. I visited my usual suspects: Musical Instruments, Arms and Armor, the Greek and Roman wing and the new Islamic Art exhibit.

I had stopped in front of Auguste Rodin's bust of Gustav Mahler, a bronze cast of the composer's head without his trademark pince-nez.

I turned to the tall, broad-shouldered fellow standing next to me, looking at the sculpture, a frozen bronze of the composer's famous head, capturing the swept-up hair, the finely formed cheekbones, the vulpine lower jaw. 

I said, "You know, there are two of them."

He said, "Oh yes?"

I burbled on. "Yes, there are two busts. One is in Lincoln Center at the Philharmonic. Whenever I take my friends to the Philharmonic I tell them 'Meet me at Mahler.' 

(I later found out that Rodin cast a number of Mahler busts, but that's not important right now.)

"He's my favorite composer," the other man said.

I said: "Really. Which symphony is your favorite?" by way of continuing the conversation.

He thought a minute. "The Second...and the Fifth."

I nodded and silently held up seven fingers. He smiled. "The Seventh. I like that one too. Actually," he added, "I'm a conductor."

"Oh," I said, trying to hide my surprise. "Where do you conduct?" 

"I am from Tashkent," he said. "My name is Aziz." 

Aziz Shokhamikov. Photo provided by Jonathan Wentworth and Associates.

A later Google search revealed my new friend to be Aziz Shohkamikov, an up-and coming Uzbekistani conductor. In 2010, he placed second in the International Mahler Conducting Competition, a springboard to a budding international career. But here, we were just two guys talking Mahler. 

I introduced myself, handing him my card and explaining about my blog and what it is that I do. That accomplished, we went back to talking about Mahler.

"Who is your favorite interpreter of Mahler?" Aziz asked. 

"I like Boulez," I said. "Boulez and Sinopoli, because they're so different from each other."

"Sinopoli? Is that with the Dresden Staatskapelle?"

"Only one of them," I said. "Only Das Lied von der Erde which he recorded before he died. The symphonies are all with the Philharmonia."

"I conducted the Dresden Staatskapelle last year," he said. "At the Semperoper."

"I saw them once, with Sinopoli," I returned. "He conducted an all-Strauss program at Carnegie Hall. I saw them last year,with Daniel Harding conducting." 

And so it went. We talked "shop" for a few more minutes, exchanged a few more words about Mahler, and went on our way. In reflection, our chance meeting says something profound and marvelous about the artistic importance of this museum, and of this city of mine. Only here, on a sunny Spring day in this city, would it happen to be that the one fellow I get into a conversation with was an up-and-coming conductor.

Concert Review: Surfing on Modern Waves

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra.
by Paul Pelkonen

Conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen in flight.

In a music industry where pianists and violinists find themselves leading symphony orchestras, the Finnish composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is an anomaly. A successful composer, he picked up the baton and started leading concerts in order to get his own music performed.

Mr. Salonen led the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center this weekend, in a program that featured the first Philadelphia performances of his own Violin Concerto with soloist Leila Josefowicz. This work was flanked by familiar works by Bartók and Debussy. The entire program had a spare, European elegance that matched its leader perfectly.

The concert opened with Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Conducting the twin string sections, playing them off against each other antiphonally, Mr. Salonen relied on minute gestures of the stick and encouragement from his left hand. The first movement was grim and weighted, developing from a slow fugue that recalls the late writing of Beethoven.

The Philadelphians played this complex opening with a deep, serious tone, before the percussion and piano joined the ensemble in the energetic dances of the second movement. A lengthy xylophone solo, carefully cued by Mr. Salonen, led off the dusky third. That instrument discoursed throughout this slow movement. The fourth moved lightly through Bartók's folk-song inspired dances, lifting to a bold, stirring climax.

Mr. Salonen's own violin concerto was written for Ms. Josefowicz in 2008. This is a narrative work, with the violinist as an athletic, constantly moving protagonist against a pulsing orchestra that alternates between singing and swinging. The opening bars pit the solo instrument against a texture of ancient Chinese gongs, ghostly and hollow. Mr. Salonen's expanded orchestra provided a silky texture in the second movement. 

The third stands in contrast, a vision of hot jazz and urban nightlife with heavy lifting for the soloist. At one point, Ms. Josefowicz duelled with a full drum set, scragging multiple horse-hairs from her bow as she played the fast string figurations. The finale is slow and reflective, rising to deep, emotive perorations before resolving the work in an unusual final chord.

Mr. Salonen took an unusually fast tempo for the opening movement of La Mer, the set of three "symphonic sketches" that stands as one of Claude Debussy's most impressive orchestral achievements. This was a sea rough and ready in its play, with the big climax seeming to float out of the horns, supported by the lapping strings and darting oboe and clarinet. 

The quicksilver tempos continued in the next two movements. Mr. Salonen and the experienced orchestra were perfectly matched, delivering a playful, but not bombastic performance of a work which is in this ensemble's musical DNA. The second movement flowed with dappled light and the spray of salt, conducted with brisk, efficient precision.

The conductor brought the the final dialogue of wind and waves to its final climactic surge, drawing a thunderous sound out of the rich brass and strings. As the house applauded and he walked offstage, Mr. Salonen's hands were still moving, riding the waves of sound that he helped create.  

Concert Review: La Nouvelle Baton

Stéphane Denève leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Not James Levine: Conductor Stéphane Denève.
Photo by Drew Farrell © 2011 IMG Artists.

On Friday night at Carnegie Hall, the venerable Boston Symphony Orchestra were led by a stockily built conductor with glasses and a great mass of frizzy hair.

No, it wasn't James Levine.

The conductor was Stéphane Denève, a French maestro who is among the parade of fine conductors that this orchestra has assembled following Mr. Levine's 2011 decision to step down as the BSO's music director. He is currently the head of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. This concert marked Mr. Denève's Carnegie Hall debut.

The program (originally planned by Mr. Levine) presented a triptych of 20th century compositions. It opened with a  finely detailed account of Maurice Ravel's "Ma Mere L'Oye," a suite based on the children's tales of Mother Goose. The opening pages were played at a snail's pace, stretching the fine web of orchestral fabric into a lucid, gossamer sound.

Mr. Deneve focused on the detail and beauty of Ravel's orchestration, whether getting lost in the woods with Tom Thumb or exploring the courtship of Beauty and the Beast. By placing the basses on stage left, the conductor created a spatial effect between those instruments and the contrabassoon representing the Beast. The final Magic Garden opened with ethereal sounds in the strings and wind before rising to its climax on a mighty swell of sound.

The violins, violas and cellos left the stage for the Concerto for Piano and Winds, featuring soloist Peter Serkin. Mr. Serkin is a skilled interpreter of this music, and has been playing Stravinsky concertos with some regularity this season. Here, his steel-fingered approach to the music locked in with Mr. Deneve's conducting to create a tense, terse performance.

The energy of the Stravinsky piece carried into this performance of the Fifth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. This is one of the composer's most enduring and popular works. And it should be: Shostakovich wrote it after an article in Pravda appeared attacking his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The editorial was written in response to the opera, which had offended Josef Stalin.

The attack article appeared in January of 1936. Shostakovich had just finished his radical three-movement Fourth Symphony and had begun rehearsing the new work. Fearing for his life, the composer locked his new work away (it emerged in 1961) and set to work on the Fifth. The result is a conventional, but potent four-movement symphony on a huge scale: a concert hall favorite that allows a great orchestra to show its quality.

Mr. Denève brought a granite-like weight to the symphony, carving sturdy blocks of sound. In turn, they supported ornate sculptures of woodwind and strings. This is Shostakovich at his most tonal, moving between granite-like chords representing the heroism of the socialist struggle and stark, confessional passages, most notably a long, anguished Largo that allowed the composer to bare his soul for all the world to hear.

Under Mr. Denève, the Boston forces presented a powerful reading of this score, with tight rhythms, burly brass and respect for the complexity of the composer's musical vision. The French conductor was active on the podium, urging the heavy brass passages forward in the early passages and guiding the first violins with a crook of fingers or a "stop" gesture with his left hand. Tempos were leisurely in the slow movement, but the brassy finale had muscle and drive.

Stupendous!

Gustavo Dudamel appears on Sesame Street.

Gustavo Dudamel, with baton conducts penguins
 as Elmo (with cute fuzzy red fur) looks on. Stupendous!
Image © 2012 Children's Television Workshop/PBS.

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel became the latest celebrity to join Elmo on Sesame Street. The Dude (or El Duderino, if you're not into that whole brevity thing) discussed the meaning of the word "stupendous" with Elmo. He then auditioned a violin-playing sheep, an octopus playing the drums, and an all-penguin choir singing the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Here's the footage:

Paavo Berglund: 1929-2012

Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund died yesterday. Photo by Kalle Ipatti © 2007

Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund, known for his interpretations of the music of Jean Sibelius, died yesterday after a long illness. He was 82.

The conductor had withdrawn from the world of music in 2007 for health reasons.

"He slowly faded away very peacefully," his daughter Alice told a Finnish newspaper. "The final cause of death was apparently pneumonia."

A Helsinki native, the conductor made three separate complete surveys of the seven Sibelius symphonies. He also held important conducting posts in Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen in the course of a long career.

His EMI recordings, made with the Helsinki Philharmonic and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra helped elevate those ensembles to prominence. He also recorded symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Late in life, he made a final Sibelius cycle with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Mr. Berglund was known for leading performances of exceptional clarity and precision.

Here's a really good performance of the autumnal Sibelius tone poem Tapiola.

The Best Little Opera House in the Bowery

Christopher Fecteau talks about life at the Amato Opera.

Christopher Fecteau, leader of dell'Arte Opera Ensemble.
Photo by Carl M. Jenks for CarlMJenksPhotography.com

The death of impresario Anthony Amato has sent repercussions through the operatic world of New York City. Conductor Christopher Fecteau leads the dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, which draws some of the same audience. At the request of Superconductor, Mr. Fecteau shared some memories of the fiery conductor and life at the little opera house on the Bowery.

"I spent most of three seasons as an assistant conductor and then associate music director at Amato." During that time, Mr. Fecteau conducted more than a dozen staples of the repertoire. "My first performance as a conductor there was Madama Butterfly. I had conducted three full staging rehearsals (no time with the orchestra--the orchestra never rehearsed.)  When I got to the theater for that particular Sunday matinee, I met the four principals backstage--only one of which I had rehearsed with. That's just the way it was done."

"As one might expect," he continues, "there were some nights that were magic, and others that were just maddening. Tony was a tough taskmaster. There was really only one way to do things: his way." He adds: "I slowly--and stubbornly--learned that his way was actually quite a fine way to do things. The consistency of that single-mindedness was oart if the glue that held productions together."

The Amato Opera after it closed in 2009.
The building is listed at being worth $6.95 million.
Photo by Michael Maren.

According to Mr. Fecteau, an opera production could have six casts, three or four different conductors, a handful of different pianists and a chamber orchestra made up of faces that were always changing. The company had over 60 operas in its repertory during its run at 319 Bowery. The theater had only 107 seats. At one performance of Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chenier, James Levine was spotted in the audience.

"It was impossible not to learn there," he says. "In addition to Tony, my teachers were the numerous dedicated singers in principal roles on down through the chorus Plus, the pianists, orchestra musicians and people like Irene Kim, who managed to keep that strange big-little machine running."

Mr. Fecteau explains that the most direct inheritor of the Amato 'mantle' is Amore Opera. Amore, he says "inherited most of the costume and set stock of the 60-year-old company." Following in the footsteps of Amato and playing in small spaces in lower Manhattan, the Amore Opera just presented the New York stage premiere of I Due Figaro a non-Beaumarchais operatic sequel to The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro.

"The biggest lessons I learned, however, were not musical, but personal," he says. "Loyalty was Tony's absolute strongest suit.  If you were good to him, to the company, to the people around him, he was good to you. In the long run, I no longer fit in at Amato, and Tony gave me a somewhat ungraceful shove out the door. I thank him for that, because it would have been difficult for me to leave that magical place in any other way."

Concert Review: The Hero and the Prince

Bartók and Dvořák at Symphony Hall.

Hero with a cello: the astonishing Yo-Yo Ma.
Photo not taken in Symphony Hall. © 2011 Sony Classics.

The orchestra roster printed in this year's Boston Symphony Orchestra concert programs still has a blank space by the words "Music Director." But Tuesday night's concert (the fourth of this program with guest cellist Yo-Yo Ma) proved that the BSO is moving on from the departure of James Levine.

Mr. Ma was at Symphony Hall to play Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto in b minor, an inspired product of the Czech composer's three years spent teaching music in America. Mr. Ma once described this concerto as "a hero's journey." He lived up to his description, playing the vivid solo part with fire, emotion, and total involvement with the music.

Dvořák wrote passages of great lyric beauty for both orchestra and soloist, with treacherous cadenzas for the latter. The formidable double-stops and trills up on the neck of the instrument can push any cellist's capabilities. Mr. Ma's responded with playing that seemed to get better with each movement. Playing with head thrown back and fingers flying, his cello wept in the slow section of the finale, before bringing the work to a triumphant close.

Juanjo Mena, who first conducted the BSO at Tanglewood in 2010, made his Symphony Hall debut with these concerts. Mr. Mena proved a skilled accompanist, helped by strong playing from the BSO. The horns deserve praise for the noble reading of the second subject of the Allegro, and the mystic, almost Wagnerian chorale heard in the finale. The subscription audience were enthusiastic, and adoring of Mr. Ma.

They were less happy about the second half of the program. The Wooden Prince is an early work by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, and a work that was new to the orchestra. Mr. Mena displayed an unerring grasp of Bartók's tricky time changes. The Spanish conductor navigated the oversized orchestra (extra percussionists, celesta and saxophones) through the score's hairpin curves. 

Instead of sonic overkill, Bartók produces a wide palette of tonal colors, from the lurching percussive rhythm of the Prince himself to a long lyric pas de deux for the lead dancers. The work includesme lodies inspired by Hungarian folk-tunes, as well as the wry humor evident in his later, more popular ballet score The Miraculous Mandarin.

Mr. Mena's own podium performance was fascinating to watch, combining traditional time-beating with the herky-jerky movements of the ballet's title character. But at 50 minutes, and in 12 sections with no pauses, The Wooden Prince is a heavy meal for the first-time listener to digest. It was greeted with polite applause. Work, composer, and orchestra deserved better.

The Italian Job

Daniel Barenboim takes over at La Scala.

Daniel Barenboim leads a rehearsal in 2005. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim has been appointed as the new Music Director of La Scala. He is the first conductor to hold that post since Riccardo Muti left in 2005. The conductor signed a 5-year contract which starts Dec. 1. He has been a frequent guest conductor at the house in recent years.

By taking this position, Mr. Barenboim has effectively swapped jobs with Mr. Muti, who now serves as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Barenboim led the CSO for 17 years, stepping down at the end of his contract in 2006.

The La Scala position is one of the most important jobs in Italian musical culture and the operatic world. As the house is often subject to strikes and other unpredictable labor actions, the music director must balance singers, unions, press, and a volatile and vocal public.

Mr. Barenboim will also retain his current post as the Music Director of the Berlin Staatsoper. An acclaimed conductor of operas and symphonies, he remains in international demand as a solo pianist and a performer of concertos. His newest recording is the two Liszt piano concertos, recorded with the Staatskapelle Berlin. Pierre Boulez conducts.

Born in Argentina in 1942, Mr. Barenboim was raised in Israel. He received early praise from Wilhelm Furtwängler and formal training from Nadia Boulanger. Mr. Barenboim rose to fame in the early 1970s as a pianist, conductor and accompanist to his first wife, the late cellist Jacqueline du Pré. She retired from music in 1973, and died in 1987.  

He has served as music director at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted the Ring at Bayreuth and issued a massive recording catalogue over a 44-year career. Among his prominent recordings: two cycles of Beethoven piano sonatas, the major  symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms, and two cycles of Bruckner symphonies recorded in Chicago and Berlin. 

A number of those recordings are being reissued this month, including a 34-disc box set (on Warner Brothers Classics) of his complete Wagner operas, recorded in Bayreuth and Berlin. (This has been released in Europe on Oct. 10--an American release date remains TBA.) Also newly available, Mr. Barenboim's first recording of the complete Bruckner symphonies, made with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s.