2013-2014 SEason News & Reviews
Boston Musical Intelligencer: BPO's Musical Healing
"Though the 9th Symphony is now so familiar that it is rare to be surprised by the work, Zander managed to do just that by cleaving with fierce independence to Beethoven’s metronome markings. The result was that many of the movements were considerably faster than this listener has ever heard. For the most part, the orchestra was up to the challenge... it was an expansive, tender, furious, despairing, mysterious, and ultimately exalting rendition. -Elisa Birdseye
Read it on Boston Musical Intelligencer
Boston Globe: Zander and Boston Philharmonic Return to Beethoven's 9th
"On Monday night, the Ninth delivered by Zander and the Boston Philharmonic was a fascinating and often briskly exciting ride, even allowing for the occasional misadventure. The brisk tempo choices in the outer movements in particular helped unlock this music's primal energy and inner rhythmic drive. Yet it was in the second movement that tempo experiments turned the most radical, with Zander taking the trio section not just presto but "prestissimo," in observance of a marking in Beethoven's original manuscript." -Jeremy Eichler
New York Arts: Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic returned to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
"Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic returned to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the first time in nearly two decades (a concert postponed from the Boston shutdown after the Marathon bombing). Zander has for many years been concerned — even obsessed — with Beethoven’s controversial metronome markings, which many musicians feel are unrealistically fast. But coming very close to those markings, yet somehow not focusing on them, this Ninth (I attended the last of three performances) had a fleet transparency that was immediately infectious, gripping, and finally quite moving. The orchestra and the Chorus Pro Musica were both superb and polished. The proto-Mahlerian awakening had an edge-of-the-seat suspensefulness. The second movement gallop was an exciting juggernaut. The third movement Adagio (“cantabile”) was like a floating — indeed, sailing — lullaby, with a single, unstoppable pulse.
The evening began with Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture. Zander made the most of its dramatic pauses and wholehearted emotion. High praise to say that the Ninth Symphony lived up to this masterful prelude." -Lloyd Schwartz
Worcester Telegram & Gazette: Beethoven as you've never heard him
"You may think you've heard Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Think again, says Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, which will perform the famous and fabulous composition in a concert in Mechanics Hall, 321 Main St., Worcester, at 8 p.m. Oct. 3." -Richard Duckett
