Andris Nelsons conducts Ives, Unsuk Chin, and Berlioz featuring Leonidas Kavakos, violin

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.