Was this the perfect Beethoven Seventh? Is there anything harder to pull off than one of the most familiar pieces of music in the classical repertory? To my ears, the mysterious slow introduction to the first movement seemed unfocused, and Lewis's performance took off only after the movement sped up. In the Presto third-movement Scherzo, the interrupting Trio presents a break in the lively dance — the intrusion of a village band. I wish Lewis had endowed this section with more character. Very well played, it didn't make the impression it could. Lewis will surely have many years to consider and reconsider his approach, and what was good about his current Beethoven Seventh was plenty exciting. (The Discovery Ensemble returns to Sanders on November 6 with Ravel's Mother Goose Suite, Copland's Clarinet Concerto, Hadyn's Symphony Number 90.)
So though Anne-Sophie Mutter won the popularity contest, our local celebrities, the greater artists, won the musical palms and laurels. It wasn't even close.
Related:
Fall Classical Preview: The power of music, Esperanza and Kenny, Review: Jonathan McPhee & the Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Jordan Hall, More 
- Fall Classical Preview: The power of music
Here’s my Top 10 list, in chronological order, of some of the season’s most appealing and important classical music events: symphonies, chamber music, operas.
- Esperanza and Kenny
Spalding's chamber music; Werner's elegy
- Review: Jonathan McPhee & the Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Jordan Hall
Jonathan McPhee is a hard man to keep up with.
- The Big Hurt: Faces refaced
Faces refaced, Spears speared, Hook hacked
- Trans Am | What Day Is It Tonight? Trans Am Live, 1993 - 2008
Trans Am are distillers of guilty pleasures, mixing fat AOR riffs with sleazy electronic accents and a propulsive attitude typically reserved for arcade soundtracks. What Day Is It Tonight? covers the DC-area band’s 20-year history with high-quality, high-energy live cuts taken from their many tours.
- Various Artists | Panama! 3
If you purchase a copy of Soundway’s wonderful Panama! 3 — and you should — you get two things for the price of one. First, this is a carefully curated CD of “Calypso Panameño, Guajira Jazz & Cumbia Típica on the Isthmus 1960-75” that will keep you smiling — and perhaps dancing — for a healthy while.
- The Big Hurt: Season's beatings
Taking advantage of your seasonal obligation to buy stuff for people, the music industry unleashes its annual torrent of giftable crap: holiday albums, greatest-hits packages, high-profile releases, deluxe reissues.
- Rihanna | Rated R
Look, it’s not as if there were a song where she says, “Chris Brown, you chicken-shit motherfucker, your ass is gonna pay.”
- The Rolling Stones | Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert
This live 1969 Madison Square Garden set was released at the band's peak, following Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed , preceding Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street , and recorded a week before the disaster at Altamont.
- The Big Hurt: Lambert works it, 50 blows it, Moz ends it
ADAM LAMBERT 's spicy AMA performance continues to dominate entertainment headlines, weeks after it first scandalized the nation — but why does America care what a man does with another man in the secluded privacy of the American Music Awards?
- Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
- Less
Topics:
Classical
, Music, Boston Symphony Orchestra, classical, More
, Music, Boston Symphony Orchestra, classical, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Mozart, Sanders Theatre, Sanders Theatre, BSO, Discovery Ensemble, Courtney Lewis, Less
