Can the BSO sell classical music without selling it short?
A little after 8 p.m. one night last November in Meyerhoff Hall, just when a conductor usually gives the downbeat that tells an orchestra to begin, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop signaled instead for composer Aaron Jay Kernis to walk out on stage. Two Kernis pieces, “Lament and Prayer” and “Newly Drawn Sky,” filled the first half of a program that concluded with Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, and Alsop, now in the first season of her BSO tenure, engaged Kernis in a chat before the performance. The nostalgic rapture of “Newly Drawn Sky,” the audience learned, was inspired by memories of the changing colors at dusk on a summer day Kernis and his wife spent at the beach with their newly born twins. When the orchestra finished, Kernis was summoned to the stage by the kind of standing ovation that Beethoven might have received after a performance of the “Pastoral.” But Kernis’ reception was also a tribute to Alsop—and for more than her passionate and exciting take
