BSO 2018/19 Season - Concert Previews

Gustavo Dudamel, the popular Venezuelan music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, makes his BSO subscription series debut with two weeks of concerts-his first BSO appearances since his Tanglewood debut in 2006. This first program ushers in the change of season with two contrasting, spring-related works. Robert Schumann composed his Symphony No. 1, "Spring", in 1841 with the encouragement of his new wife Clara; the score is bursting with energy and optimism. Igor Stravinsky's seminal ballet score "The Rite of Spring", which premiered in Paris in 1913, was given its American premiere by the BSO in 1924. Depicting an imagined ancient ritual re-awakening of the earth, the score still has the power to thrill and even shock the listener with its raw, protean power.

Brian Bell provides this tour of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", being performed on April 5-9, 2019. Igor Stravinsky's seminal ballet score "The Rite of Spring", which premiered in Paris in 1913, was given its American premiere by the BSO in 1924. Depicting an imagined ancient ritual re-awakening of the earth, the score still has the power to thrill and even shock the listener with its raw, protean power.

A quick look at Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 1, "Spring". Composed in 1841 with the encouragement of his new wife Clara. Video by Anthony Princiotti.

Igor Stravinsky's seminal ballet score "The Rite of Spring", which premiered in Paris in 1913, was given its American premiere by the BSO in 1924. Depicting an imagined ancient ritual re-awakening of the earth, the score still has the power to thrill and even shock the listener with its raw, protean power. Video by Anthony Princiotti.

Robert Schumann composed his Symphony No. 1, Spring, in 1841 with the encouragement of his new wife Clara; the score is bursting with energy and optimism. Video by Anthony Princiotti.

It is a celebration of the season with Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." It was given it's American premiere by the BSO in 1924 and is on the program again in 2019. Video by Anthony Princiotti.

A Deeper look at Duke Ellington's lush, impressionistic tone poem "A Tone Parallel to Harlem". Video by Anthony Princiotti.Video by Anthony Princiotti.

BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons chats with Brian Bell about the Strauss program of March 14-16, 2019.

Thomas Wilkins, the BSO's Germeshausen Youth and Family Concerts Conductor, makes his subscription series debut with this concert, which features music of three African-American composers along with the Puerto Rico-born Robert Sierra. Sierra wrote his Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra for eminent jazz saxophonist James Carter, including opportunities for improvisation within his dynamic and soulful score. Also in the jazz spectrum is Duke Ellington's lush, impressionistic tone poem A Tone Parallel to Harlem. Florence Price graduated from Boston's New England Conservatory in 1906 as a pianist and organist; she also studied composition there. She wrote her Third Symphony in 1940 on a commission from the WPA; Thomas Wilkins has arranged sections of the four-movement work into a tone poem he calls "Symphonic Reflections." The brash, optimistic concert-opener An American Port of Call was written in 1985 for the Virginia Symphony Orchestra by Adolphus Hailstork, inspired by his bustling home city of Norfolk, VA, where he is a professor at Old Dominion University.

Florence Price graduated from Boston's New England Conservatory in 1906 as a pianist and organist; she also studied composition there. She wrote her Third Symphony in 1940 on a commission from the WPA; Thomas Wilkins has arranged sections of the four-movement work into a tone poem he calls "Symphonic Reflections." It's on the program March 23.Video by Anthony Princiotti.

BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons chats with Brian Bell about the Strauss program of March 14-16, 2019.

A richer look into Richard Strauss and the composer's "Also sprach Zarathustra", his tone poem based on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's mystical meditation of the same name. The piece opens with a dramatic fanfare (widely known from its use by Stanley Kubrick in the sound track of 2001: A Space Odyssey), perhaps the most famous "sunrise" in music. Video by Anthony Princiotti.

The incomparable American soprano Renée Fleming returns to Symphony Hall to join Andris Nelsons and the BSO in the gorgeous and touching final scene from Richard Strauss's "conversation piece for music," the opera "Capriccio". The opera's opening Sextet for Strings and luminous Moonlight Music will precede the vocal scene. On the second half is the composer's "Also sprach Zarathustra", his tone poem based on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's mystical meditation of the same name. The piece opens with a dramatic fanfare (widely known from its use by Stanley Kubrick in the sound track of "2001: A Space Odyssey"), perhaps the most famous "sunrise" in music.

The incomparable American soprano Renée Fleming returns to Symphony Hall to join Andris Nelsons and the BSO in the gorgeous and touching final scene from Richard Strauss's "conversation piece for music," the opera "Capriccio". Video by Anthony Princiotti.

BSO Artistic Partner Thomas Adès returns for a concert featuring the world premiere of his own second piano concerto, commissioned by the BSO and composed for Kirill Gerstein, a frequent collaborator. Mr. Adès also leads the orchestra in two Romantic-era scores. Franz Liszt's Mephisto Waltz depicts a scene from Nicolaus Lenau's 1836 poem Faust in which Mephistopheles plays demonically on a fiddle during a wedding. Tchaikovsky's emotionally intense and magnificently orchestrated Fourth Symphony, completed in 1878, represents the culmination of a traumatic period in the composer's life.