Summary: Listen in to the Concert Preview! The Greek-born violin virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos returns to the BSO as both soloist and conductor in Béla Bartók's Two Portraits for violin and orchestra, which the BSO has never performed. The yearning Portrait No. 1 is an arrangement of the first movement of the composer's first, long-suppressed violin concerto; the brief second Portrait is an arrangement of a quick, waltzing piano bagatelle. Kavakos also leads Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 82 in C, The Bear, one of the six so-called "Paris" symphonies he wrote in the mid-1780s for that city as his international reputation grew. Its nickname, not the composer's own, apparently comes from the droning figure at the start of the finale, which suggested, to a later arranger, music for a dancing bear. Completing the program is Ravel's familiar arrangement of Mussorgsky's kaleidoscopic Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite of highly characterized musical reactions to fantastical paintings.
