Andris Nelsons conducts Ives, Unsuk Chin, and Berlioz featuring Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
Music Director Andris Nelsons is joined by one of his frequent collaborators, violinist Leonidas Kavakos, for the American premiere of celebrated Korean-German composer Unsuk Chin’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Scherben der Stille (“Shards of Silence”). Co-commissioned for Mr. Kavakos by the BSO, Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig, and the London Symphony Orchestra, the concerto receives its U.S. premiere in March 2022 at Symphony Hall. Chin won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in 2004 for her first violin concerto. A staple of the BSO’s repertoire for generations, Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique virtually defined the emotional intensity of musical Romanticism while also vastly expanding orchestral virtuosity. Opening the program is the American composer Charles Ives’s mysterious, innovative tone poem The Unanswered Question (1908), which features a striking solo trumpet part.
Program Notes & Works
The Unanswered Question
Ives wrote his atmospheric The Unanswered Question originally for chamber ensemble in 1908; the version with full strings dates from the 1930s.
Violin Concerto No. 2, Scherben der Stille (Shards of Silence)
South Korea-born, Berlin-based composer Unsuk Chin had no intention of writing a second violin concerto but was moved to do so by the playing of the violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
Symphonie fantastique
On December 9, 1832, Hector Berlioz won the heart of his beloved Harriet Smithson, whom he had never met, with a concert including the Symphonie fantastique, for which she had unknowingly served as inspiration when the composer fell hopelessly in love with her some years before.