*World premiere
Gil Rose, conductor
Tickets are no longer available for online purchase. Please contact the Jordan Hall Box Office at 617.585.1260 to place your order.
*World premiere
Gil Rose, conductor
Tickets are no longer available for online purchase. Please contact the Jordan Hall Box Office at 617.585.1260 to place your order.
It has become commonplace to bash the symphony orchestra. All together now: it’s impractical, old-fashioned, a relic, a museum, a bastion of canonic conservatism, a hangover from long-gone eras and aesthetics. We know the drill.
The January program in the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s season almost always emphasizes Boston-based composers of the present day or recent past. On Friday night Gil Rose led the group in three world premieres by composers of whom two still live and work in the area, while the third studied and taught here before moving elsewhere. The three pieces were very different in character, all worth hearing, and all extremely well played.
The “modern” in Boston Modern Orchestra Project varies in its meaning. Sometimes it refers broadly to music of the past several decades, such as its recent revivals of operas by Virgil Thomson and Michael Tippett. On Friday at Jordan Hall, though, its focus was on the other sense of the word: what’s happening right now. On the bill were three world premieres, all commissions from composers with local connections and associations with BMOP. This was, to my mind, the group at its vital, cutting-edge best.
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project gave world premieres by three of its veteran composer colleagues Friday night at Jordan Hall.
The sonic worlds explored in the works by Elena Ruehr, David Rakowski, and Ken Ueno covered a wide range of what is meant by “new music” today. The first two recast familiar idioms in bracing new ways. The latter explored more ear-bending sonorities. For each, Gil Rose and the BMOP orchestra provided bold advocacy.