Last year’s Boston Pops Spring opener was its first with a live audience in three years. 2021′s was done virtually, and there was none at all the year before that. So Friday’s performance at Symphony Hall should have been notable for how thoroughly un-notable it was, a return to normalcy that actually took normalcy for granted. Instead, with the evening’s program taken up in its entirety by “Ragtime: The Symphonic Concert,” the Pops pulled the unorthodox move of kicking off its season by largely sidelining itself.
Indeed, from the dressed-down musicians (clad all in black, rather than black tie, with Keith Lockhart in suspenders and shirtsleeves) to the conductor’s hosting duties limited to a comment before the concert began, the orchestra worked to avoid the spotlight on its own stage. That put the focus squarely on Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens, and the late Terrence McNally’s Tony-winning musical about the sociocultural upheaval from the collision between white, Black, and immigrant groups in the early 20th century.
The translation onto a stage with a full orchestra meant that some liberties were taken: Some story lines were streamlined or even eliminated to fit the length of a Pops performance, and sets were evoked by projecting photographs of locations, historical figures, and events on the screen above the orchestra. One character’s death was conveyed with the stylized movement of a police baton and red stage lights. And the shimmying of the Harlemites between aisles of musicians during “Prologue: Ragtime” was about the sum total of the show’s dancing.
But enough stagecraft remained to get swept up in the story, allowing the Pops to stay out of the way. Mostly; Lockhart himself delivered a line or two of the scripted courtroom commentary in “The Crime of the Century” and dropped a fly ball into the Little Boy’s glove, while he and Jewish immigrant Tateh regarded each other at the launch of “Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc.”
Flaherty’s melodies may not have possessed the stickiness to send folks home humming, but they successfully brought out the characters’ emotions in the moment, arguably more crucial in a musical. “Sarah Brown Eyes” was a gentle courtship rag between Alton Fitzgerald White’s Coalhouse and Nikki Renée Daniels’s Sarah, while Daniels sang “Your Daddy’s Son” as a slowly unfolding wail of anguish and awe. The secular gospel Americana of “Till We Reach That Day” exploited the glorious full power of the chorus, and Elizabeth Stanley delivered a stunning “Back to Before,” both a lament of what’s been lost and excitement about the progress to come.
A few bits were particularly appreciated by the Boston crowd, including the mention of spitfire anarchist Emma Goldman’s visit to Lawrence. And the crowd in this baseball-crazy town chuckled when “What a Game” began. It was a song that didn’t affect the narrative, but there’s no way it was being cut. The Pops knows its audience, even when the orchestra is taking a backseat.
THE BOSTON POPS: RAGTIME
At Symphony Hall, Friday
Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@gmail.comor on Twitter @spacecitymarc.