BSO 2018/19 Season - Concert Previews

Andris Nelsons talks about the 2015-16 BSO Season at Symphony Hall. 'Join and help us expand our wonderful BSO Family' - Andris Nelsons

The Boston Symphony Orchestra and Deutsche Grammophon have announced a new partnership that will feature a series of live recordings under the direction of BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons.

Listen to the Concert Preview! For the final concerts of the season, Bernard Haitink is joined by the eminent Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires-in her first BSO appearances since 1999-for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, from the series of great Vienna concertos the composer wrote at the height of his career there. The A major concerto, K.488, is one of the most chamber-musical and intimate of these works. Opening the program is Robert Schumann's dramatic Manfred Overture, composed in 1848 as part of incidental music for Byron's drama of the same name. Grappling with the shadow of Beethoven's symphonies, Brahms famously delayed completing and releasing his Symphony No. 1 to the world until after his fortieth birthday. It bears several deliberate touches of homage to Beethoven but is fully Brahmsian in its spirit and effect.

Download the Program Notes. For the final concerts of the season, Bernard Haitink is joined by the eminent Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires-in her first BSO appearances since 1999-for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, from the series of great Vienna concertos the composer wrote at the height of his career there. The A major concerto, K.488, is one of the most chamber-musical and intimate of these works. Opening the program is Robert Schumann's dramatic Manfred Overture, composed in 1848 as part of incidental music for Byron's drama of the same name. Grappling with the shadow of Beethoven's symphonies, Brahms famously delayed completing and releasing his Symphony No. 1 to the world until after his fortieth birthday. It bears several deliberate touches of homage to Beethoven but is fully Brahmsian in its spirit and effect.

Download the Program Notes! BSO Conductor Emeritus Bernard Haitink ends the BSO's 2014-15 season with two weeks of concerts. First, he and the orchestra are joined by dazzling French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for Ravel's 1931 Piano Concerto in G, featuring thrilling outer movements and one of the most meltingly beautiful slow movements in the repertoire. Mother Goose, an earlier Ravel score illustrating the stories of Tom Thumb, Beauty and the Beast, and others, began life as a four-hand piano suite written for children, was orchestrated in 1911, and expanded into the complete ballet score the following year with added interludes. Mozart wrote his Linz Symphony in emergency conditions: arriving in the Austrian city on October 30, 1783, without a symphony in hand, he had the four-movement work ready for performance four days later with nary a seam showing.

Listen to the Concert Preview! BSO Conductor Emeritus Bernard Haitink ends the BSO's 2014-15 season with two weeks of concerts. First, he and the orchestra are joined by dazzling French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for Ravel's 1931 Piano Concerto in G, featuring thrilling outer movements and one of the most meltingly beautiful slow movements in the repertoire. Mother Goose, an earlier Ravel score illustrating the stories of Tom Thumb, Beauty and the Beast, and others, began life as a four-hand piano suite written for children, was orchestrated in 1911, and expanded into the complete ballet score the following year with added interludes. Mozart wrote his Linz Symphony in emergency conditions: arriving in the Austrian city on October 30, 1783, without a symphony in hand, he had the four-movement work ready for performance four days later with nary a seam showing.

Listen to the Concert Preview! The legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Gunther Schuller's recent orchestral work Dreamscape begins this program. According to Schuller, this sparkling, witty, symphony-like work, commissioned by the BSO for Tanglewood's 75th anniversary and premiered by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in 2012, came to him wholly in a dream-hence its title. Its personal aspects and use of quotation make it a neat companion for Richard Strauss's novelistic tone poem Ein Heldenleben ("A Heroic Life"), which references several of the composer's earlier pieces in an amazingly virtuosic orchestral display. In between, the acclaimed Mozartian Richard Goode joins Maestro Nelsons and the orchestra for Mozart's elegantly soft-spoken final piano concerto.

Download the Program Notes! The legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Gunther Schuller's recent orchestral work Dreamscape begins this program. According to Schuller, this sparkling, witty, symphony-like work, commissioned by the BSO for Tanglewood's 75th anniversary and premiered by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in 2012, came to him wholly in a dream-hence its title. Its personal aspects and use of quotation make it a neat companion for Richard Strauss's novelistic tone poem Ein Heldenleben ("A Heroic Life"), which references several of the composer's earlier pieces in an amazingly virtuosic orchestral display. In between, the acclaimed Mozartian Richard Goode joins Maestro Nelsons and the orchestra for Mozart's elegantly soft-spoken final piano concerto.

Watch a video featuring Andris Nelsons. The marvelous German violinist Christian Tetzlaff joins Andris Nelsons and the BSO for Beethoven's peerless Violin Concerto, which, through its lyricism, intensely musical virtuosity, and expansive scope elevated the genre of the violin concerto to ambitious new heights. Shostakovich-a Beethoven devotee-purportedly wrote his Symphony No. 10 as a response to Joseph Stalin's death in 1953. Considered one of his finest, most characteristic orchestral works, the musically and emotionally rich Tenth seems partly to have been an exorcism of his conflicted personal feelings toward the Soviet dictator.

Listen to the Concert Preview! Andris Nelsons returns for the final three of his ten enormously wide-ranging 2014-15 programs. Here he conducts the BSO's second world premiere of the season, a concerto written by Boston-based composer Michael Gandolfi for Symphony Hall's remarkable, recently restored Aeolian-Skinner organ. Gandolfi's dynamic, pattern-infused, colorful works include the earlier BSO commissions The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (premiered by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra) and Night Train to Perugia (premiered by the BSO in 2012). Gandolfi's new work shares a program with Gustav Mahler's powerful Symphony No. 6, arguably Mahler's most heartfelt symphonic statement-his wife Alma called it "the most completely personal of his works."

Download the Program Notes! Andris Nelsons returns for the final three of his ten enormously wide-ranging 2014-15 programs. Here he conducts the BSO's second world premiere of the season, a concerto written by Boston-based composer Michael Gandolfi for Symphony Hall's remarkable, recently restored Aeolian-Skinner organ. Gandolfi's dynamic, pattern-infused, colorful works include the earlier BSO commissions The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (premiered by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra) and Night Train to Perugia (premiered by the BSO in 2012). Gandolfi's new work shares a program with Gustav Mahler's powerful Symphony No. 6, arguably Mahler's most heartfelt symphonic statement-his wife Alma called it "the most completely personal of his works."

Watch a video featuring Andris Nelsons and the BSO. Here he conducts the BSO's second world premiere of the season, a concerto written by Boston-based composer Michael Gandolfi for Symphony Hall's remarkable, recently restored Aeolian-Skinner organ. Gandolfi's dynamic, pattern-infused, colorful works include the earlier BSO commissions The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (premiered by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra) and Night Train to Perugia (premiered by the BSO in 2012).

Download the Program Notes! The marvelous German violinist Christian Tetzlaff joins Andris Nelsons and the BSO for Beethoven's peerless Violin Concerto, which, through its lyricism, intensely musical virtuosity, and expansive scope elevated the genre of the violin concerto to ambitious new heights. Shostakovich-a Beethoven devotee-purportedly wrote his Symphony No. 10 as a response to Joseph Stalin's death in 1953. Considered one of his finest, most characteristic orchestral works, the musically and emotionally rich Tenth seems partly to have been an exorcism of his conflicted personal feelings toward the Soviet dictator.

Listen to the Concert Preview! The marvelous German violinist Christian Tetzlaff joins Andris Nelsons and the BSO for Beethoven's peerless Violin Concerto, which, through its lyricism, intensely musical virtuosity, and expansive scope elevated the genre of the violin concerto to ambitious new heights. Shostakovich-a Beethoven devotee-purportedly wrote his Symphony No. 10 as a response to Joseph Stalin's death in 1953. Considered one of his finest, most characteristic orchestral works, the musically and emotionally rich Tenth seems partly to have been an exorcism of his conflicted personal feelings toward the Soviet dictator.

Watch a video featuring Andris Nelsons. Andris Nelsons returns for the final three of his ten enormously wide-ranging 2014-15 programs. Here he conducts the BSO's second world premiere of the season, a concerto written by Boston-based composer Michael Gandolfi for Symphony Hall's remarkable, recently restored Aeolian-Skinner organ. Gandolfi's dynamic, pattern-infused, colorful works include the earlier BSO commissions The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (premiered by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra) and Night Train to Perugia (premiered by the BSO in 2012). Gandolfi's new work shares a program with Gustav Mahler's powerful Symphony No. 6, arguably Mahler's most heartfelt symphonic statement-his wife Alma called it "the most completely personal of his works."