Seiji Ozawa EVENING AT SYMPHONY Archival Performance to Stream on BSO NOW Platform

On Thursday, February 4, at noon, at www.bso.org/now, the BSO NOW concert streaming platform will launch the first of four archival programs, featuring artists who enjoyed especially close relationships with the orchestra. All four programs were originally produced and distributed by Boston public broadcaster GBH for the iconic Evening at Symphony television series. Longtime CRB announcer Brian McCreath will serve as host for the archival BSO NOW streams.

Originally recorded on April 26, 1975, the stream available on Thursday, February 4, at noon includes Seiji Ozawa (right), who was just two years into his tenure as BSO Music Director (1973-2002), leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra and New England Conservatory Chorus in Mahler's monumental Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection) with soprano soloist Susan Davenny Wyner and contralto soloist Maureen Forrester. This historic performance marks the first of more than 40 occasions on which Ozawa conducted the BSO in Mahler's Second, which he also recorded in the 1980s as part of a complete Mahler symphony cycle for the Philips label. The piece became one of the orchestra's signature works with Ozawa. Conducting the entire piece with no score, Ozawa exhibits in this concert stream his trademark fluidity and elegance. Joining the ensemble is the great Canadian alto Maureen Forrester and soprano Susan Davenny Wyner, who went on to forge her own career as a conductor and is still a cherished member of Boston's music community today. The New England Conservatory Chorus was prepared by the venerable Lorna Cooke DeVaron, who was the founding director of choral activities at New England Conservatory and a pioneering teacher of several generations of American choral directors. Also on view are many of the symphony players who defined the sound of the BSO in that era, such as flutist Doriot Anthony Dwyer, oboist Ralph Gomberg, trumpeter Armando Ghitalla, and timpanist Everett Firth.

The next BSO NOW archival stream, launching on March 4, includes William Steinberg (BSO Music Director, 1969-72) conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra in "Mercury" from Holst's The Planets (originally recorded on October 7, 1969) and Elgar's Symphony No. 2 (originally recorded on October 6, 1970). Steinberg was renowned for his interpretations of classics from his native Germany, but he also felt a strong affinity with English music, including works by Elgar and Holst. Among the works he recorded with the BSO for Deutsche Grammophon was Gustav Holst's The Planets-a release that continues to stand out after all this time as an unsurpassed benchmark in a field of numerous recordings of that piece.

On April 1, BSO NOW will release an archival concert stream featuring Colin Davis (BSO Principal Guest Conductor, 1972-84) leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra in "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" from Wagner's Götterdämmerung (originally recorded on April 3, 1976); Sibelius' Symphony No. 6 (originally recorded on November 29, 1975); and Elgar's Cockaigne Overture, from "In London Town" (originally recorded on January 7, 1978). Davis' relationship with the Boston Symphony stretched across more than four decades. He made many recordings with the BSO-including a complete set of Sibelius symphonies and selected tone poems released on the Philips label and he was a regular presence at Tanglewood as well.

The final BSO NOW archival release of the orchestra's 2020-21 online season launches on April 8. Beginning in the late 1970s, the BSO and Seiji Ozawa recorded Tchaikovsky's three great ballet scores: The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, and Swan Lake. The April 8 Ozawa-led program includes excerpts from Acts 2 and 3 of Swan Lake, recorded on October 25, 1978. It features many musicians who are still in the BSO, as well as legendary players from the past, such as wind principals Harold Wright and Sherman Walt, harpist Ann Hobson Pilot, and string players Joseph Silverstein, Harry Ellis Dickson, Jules Eskin, and Mary Lou Speaker.

The first telecast of a BSO performance took place in 1956, when WGBH Television and WGBH-FM simulcast a concert at Kresge Auditorium, on the campus of MIT. And in 1974, WGBH Television launched its award-winning series, Evening at Symphony, in which this premier BSO NOW archival stream of Mahler's Second Symphony originally aired in April 1975. The complete series of BSO NOW archival programs is also in their original format with Evening at Symphony opening credits and the resonant voice of its fabled announcer, William Pierce.

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