Fabio Luisi reading session

While in town for his debut appearances conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Fabio Luisi visited NEC to offer a Friday morning reading session with the NEC Symphony (in photo). The score: Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. At one point Luisi explained to the violins that they should conceive their entrance as if they were presenting a bouquet of flowers to a loved one—with hopes of being "embraced" by the audience. "If you don't offer, you don't get back."

Luisi holds chief conducting positions with Dresden Staatskapelle and Vienna Symphony, and closer to home has also been heard by Metropolitan Opera audiences prior to this BSO engagement. He went on to conduct Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Met at the end of 2009, to great acclaim.

Photo by Andrew Hurlbut