Concert Reviews
Guest conductor Brian Eads led the Pops at Symphony Hall on Friday, while Lockhart and his contingent were performing in Worcester.
How busy are the Boston Pops this time of year? Consider that on Friday night, at the very same time that it was playing in Symphony Hall, it was also in Worcester. That’s the kind of holiday magic that you can pull off when you’re America’s Orchestra.
While Keith Lockhart and his contingent were off in Central Massachusetts, it was up to guest conductor Brian Eads to hold down the fort in the Pops’ home turf going into the first weekend of Holiday Pops performances. He brought a wide-eyed and eager energy to a program where “wide-eyed and eager” is practically a necessity.
The concert began instead with Beethoven’s “Welten singen,” which was more reliant on sawing and leaping strings than triumphant brass that typically kicks off Holiday Pops concerts. It was followed by the swaying and flowy “Polonaise” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Christmas Eve,” and the two pieces offered a subtle contrast. Both were festive at their core, but the Beethoven selection sounded at home in a church while the Rimsky-Korsakov was more fit for a ballroom.
The selections that followed continued the dance-forwardness, with percussion and rhythm taking a more prominent role in Jaramillo’s “Villancico Mexicano” and the swerving descents of Tchaikovsky’s familiar “Trepak” giving it a quick and sharp charge that more than earned its colloquial title of “Russian Dance.” As soon as it finished, Eads compared it to “musical caffeine” and admitted to nearly losing his baton in the effort.
The first half of the concert ended with Will LeBow narrating Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” abridged even at a Pops-epic 25 minutes long. In other hands, it might have seemed excessive, but Don Sebesky’s arrangement put the Pops through its paces, allowing them to express joy, melancholy, wonderment, terror, dreaminess, pathos and, finally and inevitably, jubilation in fairly short order. The English folk-style “I Saw Three Ships” at Fezziwig’s party captured a strain of nostalgia already embedded in Victorian society, while the chorus’s “loo loo loo”ing of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” looked forward to the Peanuts gang.
As has long been Holiday Pops tradition, the intermission marked the dividing line between the sacred and classical half and the secular and whimsical (if not markedly less sentimental) half, and the Pops returned with the jazzy, jingly winter-wonderland shiver and gallop of a joint arrangement of “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Jingle Jingle Jingle.” John Debney’s theme from “Elf” served as a pastiche of sweet orchestral beautiful-music Christmas themes, with the chorus used for primarily sonic (rather than lyrical) purpose via nonsense syllables and many, many kazoos.
After the rattling percussion of the aptly-titled “Dancing Dreidel” came “The Twelve Days Of Christmas,” which put the chorus through its paces. Sebesky’s and David Chase’s multi-genre, musical in-joke-packed arrangement of the most stultifyingly repetitious Christmas standard required them to sing in a dizzying array of different vocal styles, from kiddie whining on day two to stentorian chorale (day five) to light operetta (day four) to Broadway cornpone (day six) to cheerleading (day nine) to Queen (day 11). With Eads adopting Lockhart’s standard schtick throughout, the modern Pops classic received a huge audience response that showed that its novelty has yet to wear out.
Next came the rhythm-driven “Kijé Takes A Ride,” which was fleet, frictionless and excellent, with a snaky soprano saxophone solo by Tom Martin. “Sleigh Ride” continued the theme, with General Gary Keefe serving as guest conductor and half-giving up with a shrug before the main melody even arrived and then swinging his baton like a golf club as he shimmied and the Pops whooshed along on its own. “A Visit From St. Nicholas” narrator Staff Sgt. Ryan Pitts, on the other hand, was so excited in his robe and sleeping cap that he reached the reindeer roll call too quickly, and he and Eads joyfully jumped back in synch once the Pops had scooched up to rejoin him.
As always, Santa arrived late in the program to a swing medley of Kris Kringle-heralding tunes like “‘Zat You, Santa Claus?” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town.” He mentioned to Eads that a reindeer or two was down with the flu at the moment, leading to a joke that filled Symphony Hall with groans and turned nearly every parent against him, surely a Pops first. But he won them back by sharing images that he said he’d had AI generate of the reindeer, including one of Vixen that was simply the error message “Content Policy Violation.”
Eads closed out the night by leading the orchestra, the chorus, and the audience through sing-along favorites before sending them out into the night, and the season, filled with holiday cheer. Hopefully, the members of the Pops kept some of it for themselves, because they had magic to spread over six more performances in three states over the next 48 hours. And it was only the first weekend of the season.
Setlist for the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall — December 5, 2025
Welten singen (Hallelujah) from Christ On The Mount Of Olives (Ludwig van Beethoven)
Polonaise from Christmas Eve (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)
Villancico Mexicano (Silvino Jaramillo)
Trepak (Russian Dance) from The Nutcracker (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)
A Christmas Carol (Don Sebesky) (with Will LeBow)
INTERMISSION
The Holly Jolly Jingle (A Holly Jolly Christmas and Jingle Jingle Jingle) (Johnny Marks)
Theme from Elf (John Debney)
Dancing Dreidel (arr. Anthony DiLorenzo)
The Twelve Days Of Christmas medley (arr. David Chase/Don Sebesky)
- All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth (Donald Yetter Gardner)
- We Three Kings (John Henry Hopkins Jr.)
- Indian Love Call (Rudolf Friml/Herbert Stothart/Otto Harbach/Oscar Hammerstein II)
- Symphony No. 5 (Ludwig van Beethoven)
- The Surrey With The Fringe On Top (Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II)
- Swan Lake (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)
- My Favorite Things (Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II)
- Galop Infernal (Jacques Offenbach)
- Trepak (Russian Dance) (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)
- The Magic Flute (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- Bohemian Rhapsody (Freddie Mercury)
- National Emblem March (Edwin Eugene Bagley)
Kijé Takes A Ride (Sergei Prokofiev, arr. Sammy Nestico)
Sleigh Ride (Leroy Anderson) (with General Gary Keefe)
A Visit From St. Nicholas (‘Twas The Night Before Christmas) (arr. Joseph Reisman) (with Staff Sgt. Ryan Pitts)
Santa medley
- ‘Zat You, Santa Claus? (Jack Fox)
- I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (Tommie Connor)
- Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane) (Gene Autry/Oakley Haldeman/Harriet Melka)
- Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town (J. Fred Coots/Haven Gillespie)
A Merry Little Sing-Along
Jingle Bells (James Lord Pierpont)
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Johnny Marks)
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Hugh Martin/Ralph Blane)
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (Sammy Cahn/Jule Styne)
Winter Wonderland (Felix Bernard/Richard B. Smith)
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