Nathalie Stutzmann has taken a long and circuitous path to the Symphony Hall podium. Born in France, she made her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in 1996 as a vocal soloist in Ravel’s “L’enfant et les sortileges”. The following years saw her return several times to sing Bach, Mahler, Debussy, and de Falla under the batons of Ozawa, Haitink, and Frühbeck de Burgos. However, she said in a 2023 interview, she only decided to focus on singing after she tried to enter a conducting class as a teenage music student and “the teacher was very misogynistic, so I was never able to conduct the orchestra.”
But as she zoomed around the globe on the strength of her contralto instrument — the lowest classical voice type traditionally sung by women — shestudied with Jorma Panula, a Finnish conducting teacher whose stable of students also includes Susanna Mälkki, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Klaus Mäkelä. Her mentors also included Ozawa and Simon Rattle.
“I always had a little hope in my brain that things would change a little bit and evolution would allow me to go on with that passion,” she told journalist Toby Deller in 2017.
Stutzmann, who now directs the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, was sporting a black tuxedo jacket and white button-down shirt with cummerbund — classic maestro’s attire, made her own — when she bounded onto the stage Thursday evening for her second BSO debut.
Likewise, the evening’s program honored tradition while perceptibly pushing forward. German violinist Veronika Eberle made her own BSO debut in the first half with Beethoven’s epic Violin Concerto, an expressive challenge that can easily get mired down in its frequent repetitions of musical material if the soloist isn’t on point. But Eberle’s centered, unfussy stage presence and the cool, bracing timbre of her violin were a perfect match for Stutzmann, who led the BSO with particular attention to contrasts in dynamics and the shapes of phrases.
Stutzmann conducted with the sort of ease that should not be mistaken for complacency, and nothing sounded complacent in this performance. She seemed to give particular attention to the low strings; the arpeggiated passages in the cellos supporting the violin section’s melodic line in the first movement, for one, were satisfyingly forward in the sound. An influence from her career as a contralto, perhaps?
With Eberle’s violin singing out on top, the concerto felt more like an opera in miniature, and that feeling only compounded with the dramatic cadenzas composed for the performer by Jörg Widmann. The first movement’s cadenza sent timpanist Daniel Bauch to another set of kettledrums at the front of the stage, where he faced off with Eberle and bassist Edwin Barker in a spiky exchange that riffed on the concerto’s familiar musical material. The second movement’s cadenza sent Eberle’s violin into low earth orbit range along with that of BSO assistant concertmaster Elita Kang, in the first chair for the evening, each seemingly trying to outdo the other with the spooky glassiness of every note. The third gave the kitchen-sink treatment to the concerto’s raw material: Beethoven à la jazz club met Beethoven à la hoedown, with Barker’s plucked bass skittering and Eberle’s silver shoe stomping on the boards of the stage.
Eberle and Kang had apparently cooked up an encore together while working on their cadenza, and they unleashed a whirlwind in the form of a brief and delightfully mischievous Bartok pizzicato duet.
After intermission the orchestra and Stutzmann plunged into Ravel’s “Alborada del gracioso,” originally a piano piece but then orchestrated as a ballet. In its orchestral form it was a decadent paintbox of colorful and tactile mini-episodes, with a star turn from principal bassoonist Richard Svoboda. Some phrases were smeary around the edges, but with the piece’s clownish atmosphere, they could get away with that. The dance continued via Stravinsky’s 1919 suite from “The Firebird,” ending the evening in a blaze of cannon fire, color, and majesty. It was enough to make you forget the slush outside.
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
At Symphony Hall Feb. 6. Repeats Feb. 9. 617-266-1200, www.bso.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.