Andris Nelsons conducts Julia Adolphe and Beethoven featuring Paul Lewis, piano
Tanglewood
Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox/Stockbridge, MA
Over this weekend’s three BSO concerts, Andris Nelsons and his frequent collaborator, English pianist Paul Lewis, perform all five of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano concertos. Each of these concerts opens with a BSO co-commissioned piece by an American woman. The American composer Julia Adolphe has been praised for the sonic and narrative inventiveness of her music. About her new work, she says, “Makeshift Castle captures contrasting states of permanence and ephemerality, of perseverance and disintegration, of determination and surrender.”
The Second and Third concertos were composed about five years apart. While both were strongly influenced by Wolfgang Mozart’s concertos, No. 3 in C minor exhibits more of Beethoven’s flair for drama and innovation.
Ticket includes admission to 6pm Prelude Concert.
Gates open at 5:30pm
Performance Details
Jul 29, 2022, 8:00pm EDT
Featuring
Program Notes & Works
Makeshift Castle
Julia Adolphe’s questing, mercurial Makeshift Castle, co-commissioned by the BSO and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, juxtaposes “the fragility of life and the resilience of the human spirit.”
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Opus 19
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat—written first but published second, as Opus 19—started its life in Bonn around 1790.
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Opus 37
For virtuoso performer-composers like Beethoven, concertos were designed as personal showpieces.
