The Boston Symphony Orchestra has packed a lot of its history into this week’s program, from recent commissions and prized guest musicians all the way back to its early decades — all over the course of three works and about 80 minutes’ worth of music.
The concert began with the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, to whose works music director Andris Nelsons has turned regularly over the past decade. He has also recorded her music to excellent effect with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (which he also directs). On Thursday, he gave the American premiere of “The Wrath of God,” an assertively intense orchestral work of that grew out of the composer’s 2018 oratorio “Of Love and Hate.” It begins with a winding, chromatic melody that rises out of the very depths of the orchestra. Variations on that darkly colored theme permeate the piece, which oscillates between the heavy tread of the opening and lighter, though still uneasy, passages — contrasting facets of the angry god, it would seem.
Tellingly, “The Wrath of God” is dedicated to “the great Beethoven,” whose name is inscribed in the proscenium arch above the Symphony Hall stage. One wonders what the older composer, who authored music of heaven-storming power, would have thought of this work, which reaches a climax of clanging percussion and piercing brass dissonances. It ends with what sounded to me like a direct reference to the opening of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Nothing in its 18-minute span makes for easy listening, but it leaves a deep and forbidding impression.
The BSO did superbly with this difficult score, as they did with the German composer Detlev Glanert’s Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra, commissioned for principal trumpet Thomas Rolfs and premiered in 2019 with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. Tanglewood’s history suffuses the piece: It is dedicated to the late composer Oliver Knussen, who was head of composition at the BSO’s summer home when Glanert was a fellow there in 1986. Glanert learned of Knussen’s death as he was beginning work on the concerto, which is dedicated to his friend’s memory.
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Much of the work trades in high-energy writing that puts the soloist and orchestra into a kind of frenzied interplay. Glanert’s writing is dense but also tinged with references to jazz and a sly sense of humor. The slow movement, “Songs,” puts the trumpet in plaintive dialogue with soloists from the orchestra. There are two challenging cadenzas, which allow Rolfs to showcase the technical prowess and stellar musicianship that have made him a prized member of the BSO for more than three decades.
Prokofiev’s Fourth Symphony, which closed the concert, was part of the BSO’s celebration of the 150th birthday of Serge Koussevitzky, its pioneering music director between 1924 and 1949. Several important 20th-century works exist thanks to his tireless championing of new music. The Fourth was not, technically, a BSO commission — the composer thought the fee being offered was too low — but Koussevitzky did conduct the first performances, in November 1930. About a decade after the premiere, Prokofiev revised and expanded the symphony, so that it now exists in two versions.
The BSO has never returned to the original Fourth since its premiere, and, apart from a single movement, it has never played the revised version. So Nelsons should be commended for returning the piece to Boston’s concert life. That said, it is a piece more to be admired than loved. By turns it nods to the neoclassical charm of the First Symphony and the grandeur of the Fifth, but it doesn’t fully inhabit either world. While the individual movements are well constructed, one rarely has the sense that the material — much of which Prokofiev borrowed from his ballet score “The Prodigal Son” — is among his best, though the first movement, with its lovely opening serenade, is an exception.
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One could at least appreciate the performance, which had a focused swagger to it. Nelsons got excellent playing from the orchestra, though the brass and percussion tended to cover everyone else in their big moments, and there were some exquisite solos from the winds.
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Andris Nelsons, conductor. At Symphony Hall Thursday. Repeats Saturday.
David Weininger can be reached at globeclassicalnotes@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @davidgweininger.