Boyles leads a rich NEP program with belated Amy Beach premiere

Amy Beach

By Aaron Keebaugh, Boston Classical Review, December 6, 2021

For all the attention Amy Beach’s music continues to receive, certain works in her copious output remain unexplored.

Fortunately, guest conductor Adam Kerry Boyles and the New England Philharmonic shed new light on Jephthah’s Daughter, a large-scale work for soprano and orchestra, which was given its belated world premiere Sunday afternoon at the Tsai Performance Center.

Composed in 1903, the manuscript of Jephthah’s Daughter was confiscated by German authorities when the composer left the country before the outbreak of World War I. The score was returned to Beach 25 years later in 1928 yet sat dormant for nearly seventy years. The Boston Academy of Music presented the work at MIT in 1995 in a rendition for voice and piano. Sunday’s performance offered the premiere of the original orchestral version, 118 years after its composition.

Read the full review at Boston Classical Review