The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Hansel, Gretel & start of Boughton farewell tour
125th NHSO season begins Thursday at Woolsey Hall
NEW HAVEN — Outgoing New Haven Symphony Orchestra maestro William Boughton is asked if his final year here — starting Thursday at Woolsey Hall — will be a victory lap for him.
“Yeah, it’s been an adventurous 12 years... a tough 12 years but a rewarding 12 years,” he said in a phone interview recently from his Guilford home. “The orchestra has gone through a number of difficulties but it’s come out the other side and it’s stronger for it.”
Boughton, who announced his planned exit almost three years ago and will be succeeded by Alasdair Neale as music director in spring 2019, said the NHSO is financially more stable (it nearly went bankrupt in 2010) and artistically is doing exciting things — composers in residence and a dozen commissioned works, for example.
“It’s all American music, and I think bringing (that) into the orchestra has been an important aspect of my tenure,” said Boughton, who hails from Great Britain. “We have to kind of reinvent ourselves, because what does an orchestra of the 21st century look like? It’s not just about playing dead European composers, and I think the fostering of American talent in soloists, the diversity programs that we’ve developed ... is important, and the education programs have grown exponentially over the past 12 years.”
Boughton said he won’t take on another professional orchestra in 2019 but he is hardly retiring from music. In August, it was announced he would also be serving as interim conductor of the Yale Symphony Orchestra for this 2018-19 academic year.
But back to the NHSO season, which is a notable anniversary.
“The whole season is a kind of culmination of the work I’ve been doing for the last 12 years with the orchestra. So it combines new music — we have the fanfare from T.J. Cole (a commissioned piece called “To the Universe”), which will open the orchestra’s 125th anniversary — and the more well-known pieces such as “Scheherazade” (Rimsky-Korsakov) and (on Nov. 29, Beethoven’s) “Eroica.”
The opening night program is also New Haven Schools night, with Humperdinck’s “Hansel & Gretel: Prelude” and “Scheherazade,” inspired by the Arabian Nights story that informs the piece. (A distrustful sultan vows to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night.
But the Sultana Scheherazade saves her life by entertaining her lord with fascinating tales, for 1,001 nights, and the Sultan retracts his vow.)
Boughton also looks forward to bringing back many of the soloists he’s worked with, such as Chad Hoopes on violin in the opener doing Dvorak’s meaty “Violin Concerto in A Minor.”
“I culminate the whole season in Mahler’s glorious ‘Third Symphony,’ the longest symphony every written, where we’ll be combining forces with Yale Philharmonia (and) Elm City Girls Choir, which will be a wonderful occasion.” That’s May 2.
Other highlights? More strong examples of of American music.
“The civil rights program we’re doing in April is nearly all American music,” said Boughton of the Copland-heavy program to be
performed at Lyman Center at SCSU.
The symphony’s Nov. 8 program reflects the Boughton era’s partnerships with vocal groups and soloists — “Carmina Burana” — featuring the Fairfield County Chorale, The Chorus of Westerly, the New Haven Chorale and soloists Lisa Williamson and Zachary Johnson.
“The performance in Woolsey will feature about 350 voices, which is a colossal choir. It’ll blow the roof off Woolsey Hall,” Boughton said. “And it’s a huge orchestra, as well, for that piece.”
The concert will be repeated in Fairfield and Westerly, Rhode Island, “and I think that’s really important for the orchestra moving forward, is working with these choirs and working in these communities . ... It takes a professional orchestra to work with amateur singers, and it raises their game.”
Boughton doesn’t mince words when it comes to the main NHSO venue over the years and the need for some vision (and collaboration) in the future.
“I think that moving forward, the city and the arts organizations in the city actually need to address the whole issue of a concert hall. New Haven Symphony couldn’t do it by itself,” he said. “And (with NHSO only) it would be dark too many days of the year . ... But I think with the choral societies, the dance, there should be a venue that you could even use for bringing in some different types of music, as well — jazz, rock, all sorts of things.
“I think for the 21st century, New Haven definitely needs a performance space. I’m not saying (just) a concert hall because it needs to be broader than a concert hall but it needs to be for performance and not theater, because it’s a different type of acoustic.”
Boughton said a new venue would also be for the city’s citizens, a place to go, sit in comfort, see a show, have a drink and be together. “It’s something that everybody needs to put their heads together on and say, ‘Well how can we do this?’ It’s not a hugely expensive enterprise; one can do it nowadays (reasonably). You don’t have to spend the $400 million that they did on the Disney hall in Los Angeles.”
Other season highlights, aside from the NHSO’s funand-lively pops series: Handel’s “Messiah” on Dec. 20 and “Mozarts’ Paris” on March 14 in (awesome but uncomfortable) Woolsey Hall.