“Based on his skills, his career station, and his evident rapport with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the French conductor Stéphane Denève is rumored to be one of the candidates under consideration for the music director post. (…)
[Denève] has brought with him a clutch of French rarities he admires, beginning with Berlioz’s Overture to “Les Francs-Juges” (…) With a boldly drawn performance, Denève made an eloquent case for hearing this very early work (…)
He closed the program with a Roussel’s “Bacchus et Ariane (…) The performance itself was vividly phrased, full of color and vitality (…)
Denève interrupted his own French reverie with a set of earthy and theatrical Interludes from “The Sacrifice,” an opera by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. (…)
The performance was persuasive, and it also did not go unnoticed that, of the most closely watched conductor candidates, Denève is the only one to have programmed a single note by a living composer.”