Hooray for the technical achievements of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s clever and hardworking digital livestream team who celebrated 100 broadcast editions in this concert. It was great to see them invited on stage before the show by Dougie Scarfe, the CEO, for a highly appropriate ovation.
Narrated by top UK music announcers, these remarkable video presentations have found new ways to fulfil an old mission – commitment to quality of performance and variety of repertoire and the means of communicating them to the widest possible audiences.
Reaching miles beyond the supposed geographical limits of this orchestra, the programmes have been watched by over 150,000 viewers in 118 countries over the last four years. This is an astonishing success, and not at the cost of reducing tickets sales at the varied concert halls of the Orchestra’s home patch. Each concert can be seen again as many times as you like for 30 days after the show.
Some things about this hugely successful operation have been easy, of course. When the playing itself is of this high quality, there is a sense that all the technology has to do is keep a low profile (no matter how fast it is paddling below the surface) and let the music speak for itself.
And on this celebratory night that was the case. New Chief Conductor, Mark Wigglesworth, was on the podium, and with him performing a stunning Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 3 was the great Boris Giltburg. His playing was pin-sharp and vivid, but also warmly and humanely romantic. This is one of those works for which everyone has a slightly different perfect version in their mind, but listen and watch this one via BSOlive.com and you will surely find that Mr Giltburg has Rachmaninov’s ever-shifting world beautifully mapped. His encore, the Kreisler/Rachmaninov Liebersleid was equally lovely.
After the interval, a different story was told in Act II of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. The Orchestra’s instrumentalists swirled and sashayed through this richly tuneful music with Mr Wigglesworth very much the dancing master. The close-up views in the broadcast show in detail how the players moulded and shaped each movement with care and intricate precision.
Just the same skills were displayed by the digital team, fronted this evening by that great friend of the orchestra, Martin Handley, who also presented the first of these shows four years ago.
So hooray again for another impressive BSO achievement – that can be enjoyed the world over.
Tom Wickson
If you missed the concert you can catch up here until 4 January.