BSO 2018/19 Season - Concert Previews

Composer John Harbison and BSO Associate Conductor Ken-David Masur speak with Brian Bell about “Remembering Gatsby” being performed October 18-23, 2018, and other event’s surrounding Harbison’s 80th birthday this December.

BSO Associate Conductor Ken-David Masur is joined by outstanding American pianist Garrick Ohlsson for a work heard relatively rarely despite the popularity of its composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1. The early First Concerto exhibits the same spirit of Russian lyricism and virtuosity found in his perennially popular Second and Third concertos. Opening the program is John Harbison's Jazz Age-flavored foxtrot "Remembering Gatsby", an orchestral work foreshadowing his acclaimed opera based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". This is one of several Harbison works this season celebrating the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston-based composer's 80th birthday year. Closing the program are excerpts from Prokofiev's ballet score "Romeo and Juliet", which includes some of the composer's best-known music.

BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts Mahler's all-embracing ninety-minute Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, along with Chinese soprano Ying Fang and Argentine-born mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink. The third movement is a setting of "Urlicht," a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a source of texts for many of Mahler's songs, and the vast finale includes a setting for chorus and soprano of verses from Klopstock's poem "Resurrection." James Burton will conduct Maija Einfelde's Lux aeterna, for mixed chorus, the first of two Latvian works performed this year to mark the centenary of the country's independence.

A deeper look into Prokofiev's famed ballet score Romeo and Juliet, which includes some of the composer's best-known music. The work is on the program on October 18-23. Video produced by Anthony Princiotti.

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra-a work commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and premiered by the BSO in 1944-anchors this season-opening program highlighting the virtuosity of the orchestra's string, woodwind, brass, and percussion sections. Acclaimed Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, making his BSO debut, conducts that work, as well as Stravinsky's piquant Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings.

A short introduction to Stravinsky's piquant Symphonies of Wind Instruments; on the program on October 11-13. Video produced by Anthony Princiotti.

A short introduction to Prokofiev's famed ballet score Romeo and Juliet, which includes some of the composer's best-known music. The work is on the program on October 18-23. Video produced by Anthony Princiotti.

A short introduction to Prokofiev's famed ballet score Romeo and Juliet, which includes some of the composer's best-known music. The work is on the program on October 18-23. Video produced by Anthony Princiotti.

For his fifth season with the orchestra, BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons leads fourteen of the year’s twenty-six subscription programs, ranging from orchestral works by Haydn, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and Copland to compelling concerto collaborations with acclaimed soloists, as well as world and American premieres of pieces newly commissioned by the BSO.

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra-a work commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and premiered by the BSO in 1944-anchors the season-opening program highlighting the virtuosity of the orchestra's string, woodwind, brass, and percussion sections. The program is being led by acclaimed Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, in his BSO debut. Produced by Anthony Princiotti.

BSO Associate Conductor Ken-David Masur is joined by outstanding American pianist Garrick Ohlsson for a work heard relatively rarely despite the popularity of its composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1. The work is on the program on October 18-23. Produced by Anthony Princiotti.

BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons leads the BSO in Mahler's all-embracing. ninety-minute Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, along with Chinese soprano Ying Fang and Argentine-born mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink. The third movement is a setting of "Urlicht," a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a source of texts for many of Mahler's songs, and the vast finale includes a setting for chorus and soprano of verses from Klopstock's poem "Resurrection." Produced by Anthony Princiotti.

BSO Conductor Emeritus Bernard Haitink leads the final series of the 2017-18 season, an all-Brahms program featuring beloved pianist Emanuel Ax in the composer's monumental Piano Concerto No. 2. The turbulent First, the Second Concerto is a magisterial, far-ranging work of symphonic proportions, in four movements rather than a typical concerto's three. Brahms's Symphony No. 2 was composed relatively quickly in 1877, following his extended, years-long effort to complete the long-awaited First. The lilting Second Symphony is generally regarded as the most genial and relaxed of Brahms's four great works in the genre.

For his second week of concerts this season, Tugan Sokhiev leads the BSO in Brahms's towering Violin Concerto, with the outstanding, Ukrainian-born, Israeli violin soloist Vadim Gluzman in his BSO winter season debut. Brahms wrote his concerto in 1878 for his lifelong friend Joseph Joachim. Closing the program is Prokofiev's wartime Symphony No. 5, a powerful, searching, and expansive work premiered in January 1945 with the composer conducting. Produced by Anthony Princiotti.

BSO Conductor Emeritus Bernard Haitink leads the final series of the 2017-18 season, an all-Brahms program featuring beloved pianist Emanuel Ax in the composer's monumental Piano Concerto No. 2. The turbulent First, the Second Concerto is a magisterial, far-ranging work of symphonic proportions, in four movements rather than a typical concerto's three. Brahms's Symphony No. 2 was composed relatively quickly in 1877, following his extended, years-long effort to complete the long-awaited First. The lilting Second Symphony is generally regarded as the most genial and relaxed of Brahms's four great works in the genre.