(already subscribe? log in).

At BSO, the new year starts with another substitution

MUSIC REVIEW

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

January 06, 2012|By Jeremy Eichler

Hakan Hardenberger played trumpet for conductor Marcelo Lehninger. (Stu Rosner )

Music director searches can take years even when everything proceeds like clockwork. So the fact that two of the conductors - Andris Nelsons and Riccardo Chailly - named in most speculative lists of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s possible podium prospects both cancelled on the BSO this month does not bode well for any hopes of a speedy resolution to this interim chapter. The BSO was also faced with reassigning three weeks of subscription programs, as Chailly had been due to lead two and Nelsons one.

Of course the substitution machinery at the BSO is particularly well-oiled, and this week the orchestra once again tapped one of its own, with the 32-year-old Brazilian assistant conductor Marcelo Lehninger replacing Nelsons, with only a minor change to the program of Haydn (Symphony No. 88 instead of No. 90), and Strauss (”Also Sprach Zarathustra”). The evening’s nod to the new came courtesy of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “From the Wreckage’’ trumpet concerto, given its American premiere last night in Symphony Hall.

It’s an appealing and resourceful, if somewhat uneven, work, written for the Swedish trumpet virtuoso Hakan Hardenberger, who gave its premiere in 2005, and among its champions has been Nelsons, himself a former trumpet player. The piece calls for its soloist to wield three different instruments - the flugelhorn, trumpet, and piccolo trumpet - rising in register and brightening in tone as the work progresses.

Stylistically, the music is soaked throughout in various jazz idioms, and the writing is strongest when Turnage brings those jazz influences somewhere new, deconstructing textures or fracturing the relationship between soloist and orchestra in unexpected ways, as in the work’s opening and closing paragraphs. At other moments, though, he falls back on a more superficial massed treatment of the orchestra and the music feels much thinner. Hardenberger was a coolly commanding presence on all three instruments, capturing the music’s elusive wedding of melancholy soul and spikey caffeinated energy. His cadenza hovered in an intriguing border zone between jazz and classical. The orchestra under Lehninger was responsive if at times a bit flat-footed.

Lehninger’s thoughtful and sincere musicianship came through in the opening Haydn performance: attractive and attentive music-making with little to prove. One could quibble with tempo choices here or there, but he leads with clarity, listens well, and his podium gestures seem designed for the orchestra rather than the audience. Strauss’s massive tone poem - untouched by the BSO in over a decade - had thrilling and rocky moments. Timpanist Timothy Genis made the most of his iconic solo turn.