Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Review

Concert Review MT101
Boston Symphony Orchestra Nov.7th Saturday night Show

To begin my review of this concert, I would like to first briefly talk about foundation history of Boston Symphony Orchestra. This orchestra was founded in 1881 by Henry Lee Higginson. The first conductor was George Henschel who was a famous bastion as well as an orchestra conductor. He was also a close friend of famous composer, Johannes Brahms. The current conductor of the orchestra is Andris Nelsons who is also the music director-designate of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.The BSO (Boston Symphony Orchestra) plays most of its concert at Boston’s Symphony hall and in the summer, it performs at Tanglewood. I went to Boston Symphony Orchestra concert on the 7th of
The articulation of this orchestra was lively used. In the first repertoire of concert, Totentanz, there were a lot of dissonance and dynamic contrast that required high definition of articulation. Totentanz is a piece that shows the composer’s fascination with death. You can actually realize this from the title because the direct translation of Totentanz is the Dance of Death. What I am really surprised by the orchestra’s articulation is when the orchestra used bowing technique called the col legno. At the appropriate moment when the piece seemed like describing an image of hell, col legno in the string section sounded like clanking bones. This articulation gave me a big goosebumps and made me scared of the piece until the last cadence of the piece. The orchestra appropriately dramatize articulation to leave a big emotion in audiences’
First BSO played a piece from 18th century that describe fear and death and then the orchestra played a piece that shares same topic from 21st century. It was really fun to compare those two pieces to think about how people from old era thought about death and how we think about death. My reception to repertoire was interesting. Actually I could not really understood the first piece. I understood the meaning behind it when I read a description later. However, I understood the concept right away when I heard the second piece. I believe that it is because of the harmony the composer used in the second piece is more modern and more often used in music from horror movies. I believe that if people from 18th century listened to this performance, their reaction would exactly opposite of mine. Because they were used to hearing such harmony in the first piece and such harmony is what described death at that