The first striking thing about this Boston Symphony Orchestra prom was the conductor’s podium: a sturdy wooden construction that looked as if it had been cut from a country mansion staircase. It is travelling with the BSO on its European tour — probably the only object guaranteed to give Andris Nelsons cast-iron support when he curves backwards like a banana or grabs the rail for dear life with his left hand.
Clearly moving to his new orchestra in Boston has done nothing to change Nelsons’ physical quirks or animating spirit, but were the Bostonians responding? It didn’t seem so at first in Haydn’s Symphony No 90, rolled out in a tight but dry performance, short of personality.
Happily, everyone sounded much more at home in the romantic wartime Americana of Barber’s Essay No 2. Nelsons had his woodwind tendrils to trace, while the orchestra’s splendid brass blasted at furnace heat. Everything appeared spick and span, yet also glowing with heart — at least until the bombastic climax, the musical equivalent of Uncle Sam roaring defiance after Pearl Harbor.
Conflict and fury raged even more through Shostakovich’s Symphony No 10, the subject of Nelsons’ first Deutsche Grammophon album with the BSO, just released. This was an incandescent performance, just as lethal when creeping on tiptoes through Stalin’s Russia as when snarling sarcastic defiance over his corpse.
Every colour and instrumental solo found its place in the spacious tapestry, from the lower strings burrowing like moles to the winds’ desolate messages in the composer’s version of Morse code. Throughout, Nelsons pounced on rhythms like a tiger, lacing the finale with ferocious joy, a mood immediately revisited in the magnificent sneer of the orchestra’s encore, the Galop from Moscow, Cheryomushki. I’m moving to Boston tomorrow.