& More: Concert Going

 

Handel+Haydn Society, a Boston institution since 1815

 

 

 

 I can't play an instrument. I can't read music. I can't talk music. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. But I love listening to music -- mostly classical and for sure almost nothing written after 1975 (unless its Broadway). I am not one who fills my house with sound from dawn to dusk, not even during the isolation of the pandemic, but I am a concert-goer and have been for most of my life. I grew up on Eugene Ormandy at the Academy of Music and the Robin Hood Dell (free open air summertime concerts) and my father playing his classical LPs on Sunday mornings -- regardless of which of his children were still asleep.

When we moved to the Boston area, we eventually hooked up with another concert-going couple who introduced us to the idea of historically-informed performance. It was love at first sight. We already loved Bach and Vivaldi and now we were being introduced to new composers of the same ilk and new instruments as well. Boston has multiple outlets for what is also known as early music -- Handel + Hayden Society, Boston Early Music Festival, Boston Baroque, the former Museum Trio (our long-time staple until the principal became ill), just to name a few. It was a long time coming but we are now subscribers to Handel + Haydn and go to 6 or 8 concerts a year. While we have been to a couple of Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts, we have never been subscribers; a good band but they don't play enough of the kind of music we like to listen to. 

October 10, 2021 I sat in a concert hall for the first time since concert hall music abruptly stopped 18 or so months before. What a thrill and what an amazing, amazing concert. Symphony Hall was packed for the orchestra's 2539th concert.  The choice of music was perfect for celebrating the return to the concert hall -- up-beat and familiar with a sprinkling of new.  I was worried about the 'sprinkling of new' because I still haven't found a modern composer of classical style orchestral music whose music I like but my apprehension was unfounded. Handel's Water Music was comfortingly familiar, a gentle re-entry.  But I was there for the The Four Season and it was magnificent; I could not clap loud enough, long enough.

Concert-master Aisslinn Nosky 'lead' the 27 member ensemble. She is a force of nature -- a twinkling-eyed pixie with a violin and the audience loves her. She brings new life to the classical concert stage. Stodgy is not in her vocabulary.  Her enthusiasm and her love of the music she is playing is infectious. You see it in the ensemble and you feel it in the audience.

Vivaldi’s concertos are show vehicles, and “The Four Seasons” might be the showiest of them all. Possibly the worst thing a performer can do with the piece is play it understatedly. If it sounds like background music, you’re doing it wrong. And fortunately for the Symphony Hall audience on Friday night, H+H concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky does not do background music. Anyone who wears a red ringmaster’s tailcoat on stage had better not.

A.Z. Madonna, The Boston Globe

The Program:

Handel: Selections from Water Music

Jonathan Woody: Suite for String Orchestra after the works of Charles Ignatius Sancho

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons