Mussorgsky, Prelude to Khovanshchina: a chilly dawn on the Moskva, but beautifully colored.… The Philharmonic’s program book looks better, exposition up front and dull facts at the back. Time was you’d start off reading about the instrumentation — “Three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, four clarinets (one doubling E-flat clarinet, another doubling bass clarinet)…”— and fall asleep before the music started.… Tchaikovsky First Concerto: Lang Lang, clang clang…. Choice sentence from Maazel’s bio: “Between age 9 and 13 he conducted most of the major American orchestras.”… Augusta Read Thomas’ new Emily Dickinson settings, Gathering Paradise. Gleaming, Gehryesque orchestration. Ungainly vocal writing, warmly delivered by Heidi Grant Murphy. Shiny happy atonality…. Miraculous Mandarin: wow. Maazel is perfect for this vicious, fabulous score. He could conduct it in his sleep, possibly from the grave.
