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Two BSO soloists delight in Mozart

Jessica Zhou and Elizabeth Rowe stood out as soloists Thursday under guest conductor Francois-Xavier Roth.Winslow Townson

Last season the Parisian conductor Francois-Xavier Roth made his BSO debut, stepping in at the 11th hour for an indisposed Daniele Gatti. The program by and large went well. Just how well, however, became apparent only when the BSO announced its current season. This year, Roth suddenly finds himself in some rarefied guest-conductor company. He and Charles Dutoit are in fact the only visitors booked for not one but two weeks of subscription concerts. At the moment, I can’t recall another last-minute BSO conducting debut — and the orchestra has known many in recent years — that earned an immediate two-week re-engagement.

It also suggests that the BSO is looking to build up some new longer-term relationships with podium guests. That makes sense, but let’s hope it also tends to some older relationships that appear to have fallen by the wayside: In particular, what ever happened to the yearly visits from Thomas Adès, which consistently turned out to be highlights of their respective seasons?

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Roth’s program this week is devoted to familiar works by Mozart (the Concerto for Flute and Harp) and Beethoven (the “Eroica”) as well as one composer that even BSO regulars may not have encountered: Francois-Joseph Gossec. Little remembered today, he cut a wide path through the musical culture of his era over the course of what was, for its time, an astonishingly long life. Born in 1734, solidly in the era of Handel, Bach, and Rameau, he lived until 1829, outlasting even Beethoven and Schubert.

On Thursday night, the audience’s introduction to Gossec came by way of his “Symphonie à 17 Parties,” a rather breezy Haydnesque work particularly notable for its sparkling virtuoso woodwind writing, delivered here by BSO winds with character and elan, especially in the score’s exuberant finale. Unfortunately, under Roth’s direction the string articulation was too often blurry where it needed to be emphatic and crystalline. One was left with a positive impression of an intriguing score that seemed to have not quite entered the orchestra’s bloodstream.

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That could not be said for the night’s winningly elegant account of the Mozart double concerto, delivered by soloists from the orchestra’s own ranks, and received as an unalloyed delight. Principal flute Elizabeth Rowe summoned purity of tone and lyric grace in equal measure. And principal harp Jessica Zhou’s dynamically subtle solo work placed the music’s singing line and its rhythmic impetus in a kind of perfect equipoise. The audience also clearly enjoyed the chance to see two of the BSO’s own players in the spotlight.

Concluding the program, Roth’s “Eroica” was light and crisp, and bore the stamp of his work with period-instrument ensembles from its very first growling chords. But the conductor proved more adept at drawing out localized phrasing of interest than he did in building and sustaining pathos and expressive momentum over longer spans. In the famous Funeral March, this was apparently not for lack of an appropriately somber occasion. Roth announced touchingly from the stage afterward that one man had been on his mind during the performance of this movement: Pierre Boulez, who died on Tuesday. Next week’s program under Roth’s baton will be dedicated to his memory.

Boston Symphony Orchestra

At Symphony Hall, Thursday (program repeats Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday)


Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com.