It was love, specifically, that Ira Gershwin had in mind when he wrote the lyrics to “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” but it’s not hard to imagine that the sentiment holds for Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops as well. That’s not to say that it’s not without its pressures — sometimes, for instance, the musicians don’t see the sheet music they’ll be performing for upward of 2,000 people until hours before showtime. But on Friday’s spring season opener, the Pops filled Symphony Hall with the music of George Gershwin before turning things over to Harry Connick Jr. Asking for anything more would seem churlish.
With much of the season devoted to the centenary of “Rhapsody in Blue,” the Pops set the stage with an all-Gershwin program for the concert’s first half. With loose, snappy trombones and strings covering the titular melody, the opening “Nice Work If You Can Get It” medley included a more stately “Someone to Watch Over Me” before ending with a “‘S Wonderful” that came complete with horsey-clop percussion. Next came “Three Preludes,” which was variously agitated and galumphing, flowing and scampering, with parts of the midsection anticipating “An American in Paris.” And the playful, tiptoe syncopation of “Fascinating Rhythm” incorporated bits of “Rhapsody” and “I Got Rhythm” while giving the drummer ample opportunity to swing.
For “Rhapsody” itself, Charlie Albright attacked his piano with hungry speed, more like a hotshot jazz pianist than a classical player. He took ample advantage of the free time of his solo sections, teasing out some passages and charging heedlessly through others; his quick crumpling of the ending notes of one passage garnered a laugh from the audience. And Albright’s choice of encore — a careening “Great Balls of Fire” — showed that Jerry Lee Lewis wasn’t miles off from “Rhapsody in Blue.”
Preceded by the swinging sandstorm of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” Connick played a mix of standards (like “It Had to Be You” and “The Way You Look Tonight”) and jazzier New Orleans fare. The bluesy, blocky “Tico-Tico No Fubá” rode on the blunt stabs at his piano, while “Doctor Jazz” gradually grew into a lightly rollicking Dixieland number, with his whole band soloing at once to create a loose, joyous cacophony. And the Pops accompanied his “September Song” with all purple twilight hues, deepening the sorrow running through Connick’s vocals.
It was a shame, then, that Connick himself was a stiff and low-energy performer, standing largely motionless and singing with a heavy-ish vibrato but not much feeling. It turned the peripatetic float of “Lost in the Stars” inert and made his piano solo on the jauntier “I Concentrate on You” sound like fumbling, even without playing a wrong note. But with genial stage banter and a killer septet that infused “Come By Me” with gospel flair and “Bourbon Street Parade” with Big Easy swing, Connick kept the bar reasonably high, even if he was holding it up from underneath.
Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@gmail.com or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social.
THE BOSTON POPS WITH HARRY CONNICK JR.
At Symphony Hall, Friday (repeated Saturday)
