Symphony No. 8 & Violin Concerto No. 1 with Baiba Skride | Decoding Shostakovich
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Baiba Skride, violin
ALL-SHOSTAKOVICH program
Violin Concerto No. 1
-Intermission-
Symphony No. 8
Friday afternoon's performance by Baiba Skride is generously supported by the Plimpton Shattuck Fund.
A part of our series looking at the music and times of Dmitri Shostakovich and how the composer folded messages of revolution and resistance into his music during a politically turbulent time. Latvian violinist Baiba Skride brings her signature dulcet tones to Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1. This work is a deeply personal one, influenced by the composer’s fear of the Soviet censors and actual encounters with restrictive directives from the government. These bitter feelings toward the regime especially color the third and fourth movements. In this way and many others, we see the composer finding ways to stand up to prevailing political winds; for example, the whole piece is shot through with Jewish klezmer influence at a time when antisemitism was on the rise in the USSR.
Pre-concert Talk
The May 2 concert will include a pre-concert talk at 12:15pm with Soviet and Russian cultural historian Harlow Robinson.
- The Henry Lee Higginson Memorial Concert
- The Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser Concert
Performance Details
May 2, 2025, 1:30pm EDT
Featuring
Program Notes & Works
Violin Concerto No. 1, Opus 77[99]
Although the concerto was completed in 1948, Shostakovich's concerns about official Soviet censure led him to delay the premiere of this deeply personal work until 1955.
Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Opus 65
Shostakovich’s Eighth was singled out in the 1948 Communist crackdown for its complexity, gloom, and “subjectivism.” Nowadays, however, we recognize it as one of his greatest and most compelling achievements in the realm of the symphony.
