Saturday, November 22, 2025
8:00 PM
BSO Assistant Conductor Anna Handler leads the rarely heard Violin Concerto by Thomas de Hartmann, with soloist Joshua Bell. The program also spotlights two works of vivid storytelling: Grace-Evangeline Mason’s 2021 work The Imagined Forest and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Anna Handler, conductor
Joshua Bell, violin
Grace-Evangeline MASON The Imagined Forest
Thomas DE HARTMANN Violin Concerto
Modest MUSSORGSKY (orch. RAVEL) Pictures at an Exhibition
Learn more about the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 2025-2026 season.
Learn more about the art of Clare Celeste Börsch, whose work inspired composer Grace-Evangeline Mason to write The Imagined Forest.
In an interview with CRB's Brian McCreath, Anna Handler describes the experience of being called to step in to conduct this program on short notice, her trust in colleagues both within the BSO and from the wider musical world, and her fascination with Ravel's orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited for clarity):
Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Anna Handler, who is our conductor for the Boston Symphony this week, which wasn't the case a week ago or so, but Anna, thank you for your time today. I appreciate it.
Anna Handler Thank you for having me. It's a very, very interesting and exciting moment in my development and my life right now.
Brian McCreath And the reason for that is that the originally scheduled conductor couldn't be here because of an injury apparently. But here you are as the Assistant Conductor, someone who was already going to be here at the hall this week anyway, covering, as we say. So you had studied the scores and you knew what the music would be. But tell me about the moment that you heard you would actually be taking over this entire week of rehearsals and concerts.
Anna Handler Well, I was really not expecting that it would happen this week because Jonathon [Heyward] is a very esteemed colleague and a young colleague, and he was making his debut. So normally you go through the assistant conductor schedule and you think, okay, which pieces do I already know? And Mussorgsky, of course, is a standard piece. So I have done it before at Julliard. I played the celesta part, but I have never conducted it in a public concert and with an orchestra of this level. But you know the music in a way. And then you think, and you recalibrate with everything else you have to do as an assistant conductor, because this is like a post-doc program, so to speak. So we have to do everything to be as prepared as we can, but also of course, do other things, do other engagements. I'm also still working at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. So I was just coming out of eight weeks of intense opera rehearsals with Carmen, Magic Flute, Figaro, Tristan und Isolde. And it's of course a moment where you think, okay, I'm going to assist, and then you see yourself in this assisting role.
Anyways, I was actually with my sister in Berlin, and we were looking for shelves for our shoes because we just moved to a brand-new apartment, my first own apartment at 29, but in Berlin. We were in the KaDeWe, actually, this famous shopping mall. And my sister was like, oh, look at these pans. And I was like, we should cook. And I don't cook much, but I mean, it was a very hilarious situation. And I look at my phone and normally I was like, I should not be on my phone. I should focus, but then I get this text that says, "Look, at your emails!" And it literally said, "Your Symphony Hall debut." And it says like, "It looks like your debut is coming earlier than February. We need you to step in and lead the rehearsals and the concerts." And I mean, it's a very exciting feeling because there were so many moments last season where I felt like, I wish I could go on stage and do it. Like really, there were so many pieces and moments where I was like, I would love to touch the sound. I would love to do it. But in this case, we have two completely unknown pieces on the program, apart from Pictures at an Exhibition. So the first piece is by Grace-Evangeline Mason, called The Imagined Forest. And it has a huge instrumentation, so big orchestra, a lot of people playing. And then the second piece on the program, with the great Joshua Bell as violinist, is a violin concerto by Thomas de Hartmann. I hadn't heard of it before, but Joshua has recorded it. And of course, so I listened to the recording, and it's a beautiful piece. I'm very excited and thankful I get to do it and get to know it now.
Brian McCreath That's an amazing story. I love the picture of you in a shopping center in Germany getting a text saying, "check your email."
Anna Handler It's very funny, yeah, we were looking for pans and my sister was like, I want to do crepe, you know, so she was looking for these special pans, and we are surrounded by all these cooking utensils. And I was supposed to do something else this evening as well, like edit some videos. So thanks God I live in front of a copy shop, because normally of course when you have so many scores to study. I also decide which ones do I study on my iPad, and which ones do I print out? And sometimes the BSO library prints it out then for me when I come here and so on. So I had the markings on my iPad, but I was like, I'm not going to conduct from an iPad. So I was, like, okay, I'll go to the copy shop and I'm going to print it out big so I can see it well. My Mussorgsky score that is marked up was in Munich. So there was no time to send it to me, but it's okay. I know what was in there. So, I was on the plane and that's even funnier because on the plane, my score was bigger than the space in front of me. And I was in the middle seat economy class flying through Iceland because again, I thought like, okay, this is going to be a relaxed assisting week. I can do the stop. So I asked the lady next to me if I can have the aisle seat to really turn the pages of my huge score, and I promised her two tickets for the concert.
Brian McCreath [laughs] A little bribery never hurt anyone, right? That's wonderful.
Okay so tell me about Grace-Evangeline Mason's Imagined Forest. It's a really sparkling piece in a lot of ways, but tell me, from your perspective of preparing it, what is it that this piece presents to you that you really need to grapple with as the conductor?
Anna Handler I love the colors that she creates through her orchestration. There's a lot going on simultaneously, and I have to decide who has the main voice, the Hauptstimme, who has their melody, and who is ornamentation or accompaniment. Because a lot is going on at the same time, but there has to be a hierarchy of importance. So I went through the score with this idea of, who is playing solo, and who's second and third in importance? And then they are just two different tempi. But I feel that this forest is full of unexpected creatures, animals, flowers, plants. It's a beautiful texture. And a lot is happening. A lot is happening. It's very unpredictable music. It's really unpredictable. I think it's kind of like a kaleidoscope of scenes and situations in this imagined forest.
Brian McCreath That's great. I mean, it is a lovely piece.
Anna Handler It's a lovely piece, and it has some film music elements. We have a violin solo, a marimba solo, which I love. And English horn solo, oboe solo, trumpet solo. I feel like these are all protagonists, or maybe animals, in the forest, you know?
Brian McCreath I love that. That's great. So this concerto by Thomas de Hartmann, had you heard of Thomas de Hartmann before? I mean you said you hadn't heard the Violin Concerto but not even knowledge of the composer himself.
Anna Handler I didn't, no, and I think he's older than one would expect, but it's a rediscovered piece. And I have many friends from Ukraine and I've been myself to Lviv, in west Ukraine four times and my very first conducting mentor was Oksana Lyniv and then Kirill Petrenko, and so they are from Ukraine. And I am so happy to report to them that I'm doing a piece by a Ukrainian composer this time. Of course there's a connection to Pictures with the grand portal of Kiev as the last piece of the Mussorgsky Pictures, but at the end of the day, maybe I think it's a piece with a lot of energy. It's about pain, destruction, emptiness, resilience, fight. A lot of fire.
It's very beautiful.
Anna Handler Very beautiful, but also all the different emotions of life. I think we have a, like, energetic and almost fighting energy in it. And then again, a peaceful and dance like...
Brian McCreath Given that you found out so late that you would be conducting this concert, I have to imagine that Joshua Bell, knowing that he would be your soloist and that he is a big advocate for this piece, must have given you a sense of security about really grappling with it and bringing across the performance.
Anna Handler Absolutely, yeah. I am so grateful that he is an advocate of this piece, and he knows what he's doing, he has recorded it. I also talked to Dalia Stasevska, a very esteemed colleague who has recorded with him, and they just did it together in New York and in Toronto. And so we had a talk, we had a phone call, and she also guided me through this, and I mean it's a brother and sisterhood in this business, which is beautiful. I mean, I would do the same for people who would have to jump in. And that's how we carry the knowledge around.
Brian McCreath That's lovely, that you that you were able to talk to Dalia. I mean, she's wonderful. She's just terrific anyway. But to be able to to call her up and just talk through the piece and what a conductor needs to do, how you navigate this piece is really helpful, I guess.
Anna Handler Yeah, I think everybody knows how stressful these jump ins are and everybody's supportive of each other. It's like, okay, if I can help you somehow to, in the limited rehearsal time, we don't have three days to learn it together. It's like, you come, we have two hours, and you have to deliver. That's the thing. That's why if everybody had a lot of rehearsal time there would be no stress, but it's like, as a conductor, you come and you have a certain amount of hours to get it done. That's why you have to come so prepared to help to guide the group and steer the ship.
Brian McCreath Well, okay, so going back to, again, when you get this text and you're in the department store and you were looking at pans and everything, to know that you were going to be conducting Pictures at an Exhibition must have also felt very good because this is a piece people know. You said that you have worked on it before, and what a wonderful thing to do with the Boston Symphony.
Anna Handler Oh yes, I'm so, so glad. And I am going to do Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition and then next time Swan Lake. So, I...
Brian McCreath Yes, in February, that's when you...
Anna Handler In February, exactly, yeah. So, it's just music that has so much emotional quality and also it's so pintoresque. It helps to interpret it. And I have not played the whole Mussorgsky piano cycle, but I've played some of their pieces, and there are different orchestrations of the original piano solo version. And one is by Maurice Ravel, which we are doing, but there's also one by Gorchakov, which Kurt Masur used to do. And it's very interesting to see the changes because, for example, number four, “Bydlo,” which is the ox and depicts a wagon that is being carried through the mud.
Brian McCreath Big tuba solo.
Anna Handler Yeah, big tuba solo, but Maurice Ravel writes pianissimo for the celli in basses. [sings] And originally in the piano, it's forte, and also Gorchakov gives this like really forte and gives it to four horns. [sings] So, depicting this heavy stomping inside of the mud, and work. It's so interesting to see then what Ravel does with it and how everybody sees these pictures and not all of the pictures by Viktor Hartmann, who was Mussorgsky's good friend who died and who the cycle is dedicated to, not all of his pictures are unfortunately still available to look at. And so for me, it's just a study of how can sound from the piano be transformed for a big orchestra.
Brian McCreath And with this piece, there's so much work for soloists in the orchestra. And I have to think that, you know, you've gotten to know these players very well now in the time that you've been here with the BSO. So it must be kind of fun to be able to look each of these players in the eye as they come up with their solos and you have a relationship with them. It's not someone that you just met this week.
Anna Handler No, this is a big gift. It's one of my musical families and probably right now my closest musical family. And I feel they are my grandparents or my parents or my friends. I mean, of course, there's always professional distance in a way, but many of them really, I feel, are mentors. And they can tell me, look Anna you can stand up straighter, or you can relax in this moment, or trust us, we will be there for you. We were here to support you. We're doing music together. It's like when you do chamber music, one cannot do everything, you know? Everybody has to give a little bit and that's absolutely what I'm feeling, especially this week. Everybody is understanding and is helping and is breathing together. And that's a beautiful gift. There's no one losing in such a situation because everybody is helping together to make this a success. But still it's interesting for me to see that now I have reached a level of trust with them, that I can also say, can we try this? It might not be correct, but what is correct in art, right? There's not right or wrong, but I have an intuition about this sound. Can we please try it, even if it's against the convention or tradition. But I have this kind of explorational spirit, and I like to see what colors we can get out.
Brian McCreath That's wonderful. I love that you compared your position to a post-doc. That's such a thing that people understand. They get what that's about, right? And that's what you're describing, is you have these mentors around you that, even though you're leading the orchestra, they're there to support you, they're there to help you with everything that you need to make this a success.
Anna Handler Yeah, of course people want to see that you have the confidence to stand there and be like, okay, but the confidence is also like, yes, I want to repeat this section. I think we can do this better or we can do this differently. Let's try. Of course I have a vision, but also I am 29, and I have conducted this piece less or fewer times than people have played it in orchestra. And that's, I think, what every orchestra musician knows when they sign up for this position, for this job, they will know inevitably there will come a conductor who is younger than them at some point. Something that I was thinking, especially in the last 48 hours was that I love two mottos, and I talked about this with Lorna McGhee.
Brian McCreath Our principal flutist.
Anna Handler Wonderful soul. And since one year I found these two sentences. One is, don't show up to prove, show up to improve. And Lorna added, don't show up too impress, show up to express. And I think with these two mottos, I can get through any situation. But this is how classical music stays alive by giving young people the chance to learn. And to access this network of knowledge. And that's what I'm doing right now. I graduated two and a half years ago from Juilliard, but then I was in LA or Boston or Berlin, all of these places, I can access this network and then maybe in 10 years or even before, I also give back.
Brian McCreath Most certainly, most certainly. Anna, I love talking to you about all of this. It's so fun. It's so fun to talk with you about this, but thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
Anna Handler Thank you so much and I hope to see you all at the concerts.