Dip Your Ears, No. 166 (Nelsons’ Instant Classic Dvořák)
  Antonín Dvořák, Symphony No.9, Heldenlied Andris Nelsons / BRSO BR Klassik     |
Old World New World
Late 2010, Andris Nelsons, incoming Music Director of the Boston Symphony but also loved, courted, and groomed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, performed a program of Charles Ives, John Adams, and Igor Stravinsky in Munich—capped, almost incongruously, with Dvořák’s Ninth (review here). Nicely accentuated, tastefully exaggerated with exalted exclamation points, it hit all the right buttons with the audience then. It’s even better on record! With lashings of Wagner in the first movement, unsentimental beauty in the Largo, Beethoven 9th analogies brought out fully in the Scherzo, and all the pre-echoes of Jaws (and Star Wars) in the Finale, it’s just about a modern classic. Ingenious coupling with Dvořák’s rarely played last tone poem “Hero’s Song”.
