Mälkki delivered a thrilling adventure, layers of wind and sea intermingling, teasing each other, arguing with each other, making love. I can’t remember ever hearing a live performance so involving, so thrilling, so thoroughly about so many things.
Another outstanding orchestral event marked the return to the BSO of someone we need to hear more often, the Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki (chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic), in what was only her fourth visit to the BSO and her first appearance since February 2011. This program included Fauré’s beloved “Pavane,” played with exquisite transparency and refinement (helped immensely by Elizabeth Rowe’s flute), one movement from an early piece by Messiaen, and the American premiere of an exciting and challenging half-hour long BSO co-commission, Swiss composer Dieter Ammann’s Piano Concerto (“Gran Partita”), both written for and played by the Swiss master Andreas Haefliger.
But the big event was more surprising. Debussy’s “La Mer” is familiar BSO territory. The BSO played its American premiere in 1907, only two years after its world premiere in Paris, and it has since become a staple of almost every BSO music director and countless guest conductors. The BSO archives lists 327 individual performances of it. But this one was not the familiar run-through with gorgeous playing and little more than merely pictorial content (the waves and the wind). Mälkii delivered a thrilling adventure, layers of wind and sea intermingling, teasing each other, arguing with each other, making love. I can’t remember ever hearing a live performance so involving, so thrilling, so thoroughly about so many things.