2024-25 BSO Season

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Renée Fleming, soprano
Rod Gilfry, baritone
Wendall Harrington, projection designer

MOZART Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio
MOZART Symphony No. 36, Linz
-Intermission-
Kevin PUTS The Brightness of Light, for soprano, baritone, and orchestra

Renowned as one of the world’s foremost sopranos, Renée Fleming made her debut in Mozart’s Idomeneo under Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood. Over her career she has garnered a National Medal of the Arts, five Grammy awards, a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur from the French government, a Cross of the Order of Merit from Germany, and was a 2023 Kennedy Center honoree. The New Yorker has said her voice "soars with the force of an uncontainable soul."

Renée is celebrated for her Strauss interpretations, and frequently performs Strauss songs and opera excerpts with the BSO, including Der Rosenkavalier under Andris Nelsons. She has premiered three BSO commissions composed for her, including Kevin Puts’ The Brightness of Light, which she brings to Symphony Hall on this program.

The evening opens with two high-spirited Mozart works dating from his early Vienna years, when he was creating a new life as an independent composer.

Join Renée Fleming after the Saturday, November 23 evening concert for a special signing of her new book "Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness." This collection of essays features reflections on the impact of music and the arts on our health from leading scientists, artists, therapists, educators, and physicians.

Victor Romanul, violin 
Michael Zaretsky, viola
Xak Bjerken, piano

John WILLIAMS Duo Concertante for violin and viola
MOZART Duo in G for violin and viola, K.423
SHOSTAKOVICH Viola Sonata, Op. 147

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Ross Jamie Collins and Na’Zir McFadden, Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellows
Benjamin Grosvenor, piano

SIBELIUS Finlandia
GRIEG Piano Concerto
-Intermission-
GRIEG Holberg Suite
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 7

Andris Nelsons and our two summer 2024 Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellows share this concert of Norwegian and Finnish works. British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor performs the Norwegian Edvard Grieg’s fiery Piano Concerto, paired with the composer’s delightful Holberg Suite, based on Baroque dances. Jean Sibelius composed Finlandia pointedly to elevate Finnish national feeling, and it succeeded wonderfully, becoming one of his most popular works. His late single-movement Seventh Symphony is the ultimate expression of his personal musical language. 

Pre-concert Talk
The November 29 performance will include a pre-concert talk starting at 12:15pm with music and culture historian Lucy Caplan.

Andris Nelsons, conductor

ALL-BEETHOVEN program
Symphony No. 1
Symphony No. 2
-Intermission-
Symphony No. 3, Eroica

Our exploration of Beethoven starts with his beginnings as an acolyte of Joseph Haydn and W.A. Mozart in his Symphony No. 1 in 1800. Beethoven revolutionized the symphony – and the language of music – through the startlingly innovative Second and Third (Eroica) symphonies which incorporated the heroic journey into symphonic form

Andris Nelsons, conductor

ALL-BEETHOVEN program
Symphony No.4
Symphony No. 5

Beethoven composed his Fourth and Fifth symphonies almost concurrently, but they’re very different in their expressive impact. The Fourth is one of Beethoven’s warmest, most congenial works, sharing that mood with the Violin Concerto completed just after the symphony. The Fifth Symphony, by contrast, creates wonderful intensity through the famous four-note “fate” motif—perhaps the most famous musical fragment of all time—and resolves that tension in a triumphant finale.

Andris Nelsons, conductor

ALL-BEETHOVEN program
Symphony No.4
-Intermission-
Symphony No. 5

Beethoven composed his Fourth and Fifth symphonies almost concurrently, but they’re very different in their expressive impact. The Fourth is one of Beethoven’s warmest, most congenial works, sharing that mood with the Violin Concerto completed just after the symphony. The Fifth Symphony, by contrast, creates wonderful intensity through the famous four-note “fate” motif—perhaps the most famous musical fragment of all time—and resolves that tension in a triumphant finale.

Andris Nelsons, conductor

ALL-BEETHOVEN program
Symphony No. 6, Pastoral
-Intermission-
Symphony No. 7

Beethoven conceived his Pastoral Symphony, No. 6, as an illustration of a lovely day spent in the countryside, where we encounter babbling brooks, birds of various sorts, friendly country dwellers, and a brief, tumultuous storm. His Seventh Symphony has long been one of his most popular works—especially its solemn Allegretto, which had such an effect at its premiere that it was immediately encored.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Amanda Majeski, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
Pavel Černoch, tenor
Andrè Schuen, baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
 James Burton, conductor

ALL-BEETHOVEN program
Symphony No. 8
-Intermission-
Symphony No. 9

For all his reputation as a prickly artistic genius whose music crackles with heaven-storming power, Beethoven shared with his teacher Haydn a delightful musical wit, nowhere so clearly demonstrated as in his Eighth Symphony. The cycle concludes with his hugely ambitious and all-embracing Ninth, a revolution in and of itself; it was the first symphony to include chorus, transforming Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” into a hymn for humanity.

This week's performances by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus are supported by the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Fund for Voice and Chorus.

Jenny Ahn and Ala Jojatu, violins 
Cathy Basrak, viola 
Christine Lee, cello

KORNGOLD String Quartet No. 2 in E-flat, Op. 26
BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 7 in F, Op. 59, No. 1, Razumovsky

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Christine Goerke, soprano (Marietta)
Elisa Sunshine, soprano (Juliette)
Amber Monroe, mezzo-soprano (Lucienne)
Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano (Brigitte)
Brandon Jovanovich, tenor (Paul)
Joshua Sanders, tenor (Victorin)
Neal Ferreira, tenor (Gaston)
Terrence Chin-Loy, tenor (Graf Albert) 
Andrzej Filończyk, baritone (Frank)
Elliot Madore, baritone (Frank/Fritz)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
 James Burton, conductor
Boston Lyric Opera Chorus
  Brett Hodgdon, conductor

KORNGOLD Die tote Stadt*

Erich Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”) is an incredibly tender work, embodying the twilight of the Romantic era. Korngold, a remarkable prodigy who later became one of Hollywood’s most important composers, began the opera when he was only 19 and completed it at age 23. It opened simultaneously in December 1920 in Cologne and Hamburg and became one of the biggest operatic successes of the era. The opera’s theme of struggling with the memory of a lost loved one undoubtedly resonated with audiences still traumatized by the recent catastrophe of World War I.

*Sung in German with English supertitles.
Presented in collaboration with the Boston Lyric Opera.

Please note that ticket purchase information will be shared with the Boston Lyric Opera.

This week's performances by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus are supported by the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Fund for Voice and Chorus.

Jenny Ahn and Ala Jojatu, violins 
Cathy Basrak, viola 
Christine, cello

KORNGOLD String Quartet No. 2 in E-flat, Op. 26
BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 7 in F, Op. 59, No. 1, Razumovsky

Nathalie Stutzmann, conductor
Veronika Eberle, violin

BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto
-Intermission-
RAVEL Alborada del gracioso
STRAVINSKY The Firebird (1919 suite)

French conductor Nathalie Stutzmann makes her BSO conducting debut with German violinist Veronika Eberle in her Symphony Hall debut in Beethoven’s towering Violin Concerto. Ravel's Alborada del gracioso and Stravinsky’s ballet score The Firebird are both marvels of orchestral brilliance from the 1910s: Ravel’s one of his many Spanish-influenced confections and Stravinsky’s a journey through a Russian folk tale of heroism, magic, and renewal that vaulted the composer to the forefront of modern music.

Herbert Blomstedt, conductor

SCHUBERT Symphony No. 6
-Intermission-
BRAHMS Symphony No. 1

Herbert Blomstedt, celebrating a seven-decade conducting career, returns to lead the BSO in Franz Schubert's light-hearted, cheerful Symphony No. 6, composed when he was 20 and notable as a satisfyingly classical work preceding his more searching later symphonies. Brahms was strongly influenced by Schubert but more so still by Beethoven, whose symphonic shadow apparently kept Brahms from completing his First Symphony until he was 43 years old. A prominent theme in its finale is a direct nod to Beethoven’s Ninth.

Pre-concert Talk
The February 14 performance will include a pre-concert talk starting at 12:15pm with former BSO Director of Program Publications, Marc Mandel.

J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano
Samy Rachid, conductor (Golijov)

SCHUBERT Notturno in E-flat for violin, cello, and piano, D.897
RAVEL Chansons madécasses, for mezzo-soprano, flute, cello, and piano
Osvaldo GOLIJOV Laika, for mezzo-soprano and ensemble
-Intermission-
BRAHMS String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat, Op. 18

Alan Gilbert, conductor
Isabelle Faust, violin

HAYDN Symphony No. 48, Marie Therese
STRAVINSKY Violin Concerto
-Intermission-
HAYDN Symphony No. 99

Isabelle Faust and Alan Gilbert return for Stravinsky’s bracing, wry Violin Concerto, a work at the core of his sparkling and witty neoclassical period. Bracketing Stravinsky’s concerto are two Joseph Haydn works from early and late in his symphonic career, during which he largely created the foundations for the 18th-century Viennese Classical era.

Saturday evening’s concert is generously supported by Jim Aisner, in memory of his wife, Virginia Simpson Aisner.

Saturday evening’s performance by Isabelle Faust is generously supported by Lloyd Axelrod, M.D.

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
Alban Gerhardt, cello

Gabriela ORTIZ Revolución diamantina
TCHAIKOVSKY Variations on a Rococo Theme, for cello and orchestra
TCHAIKOVSKY Francesca da Rimini

Acclaimed Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, known for her vibrant instrumental colors and skill with dramatic narrative, wrote her ballet score Revolución diamantina with Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza. The piece explores the powerful Mexican feminist “Glitter Revolution” campaign to highlight an epidemic of violence against women. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wonderfully depicts love’s passion and an infernal whirlwind in his tone poem Francesca da Rimini, inspired by a historic injustice recounted in Dante’s Inferno. Murdered by her husband, Francesca suffers in the second level of hell for her lustfulness, buffeted by an eternal storm. As a contrast, Alban Gerhardt is soloist in the composer’s charming Variations on a Rococo Theme.

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor 
Alban Gerhardt, cello 
The Crossing 
 Donald Nally, Artistic Director

Gabriela ORTIZ Revolución diamantina
-Intermission-
TCHAIKOVSKY Variations on a Rococo Theme, for cello and orchestra
TCHAIKOVSKY Francesca da Rimini

Acclaimed Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, known for her vibrant instrumental colors and skill with dramatic narrative, wrote her ballet score Revolución diamantina with Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza. The piece explores the powerful Mexican feminist “Glitter Revolution” campaign to highlight an epidemic of violence against women. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wonderfully depicts love’s passion and an infernal whirlwind in his tone poem Francesca da Rimini, inspired by a historic injustice recounted in Dante’s Inferno. Murdered by her husband, Francesca suffers in the second level of hell for her lustfulness, buffeted by an eternal storm. As a contrast, Alban Gerhardt is soloist in the composer’s charming Variations on a Rococo Theme.

Eun Sun Kim, conductor
Inon Barnatan, piano

LIADOV The Enchanted Lake
BARTÓK Piano Concerto No. 3
-Intermission-
RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 3

South Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim makes her BSO debut with a trio of pieces exploring innovation within tradition. Star pianist Inon Barnatan returns to Symphony Hall to take on one of Bartók’s final works, the Third Piano Concerto, a love letter to his wife and his home country. While living in poverty in New York having fled the onslaught of the Nazis into Hungary, Bartók’s creativity had stalled out, and his body was failing from a long illness. The concerto — not quite finished when he passed — is a more gentle and accessibly poetic work than his previous concertos, a summation of where Bartók’s style left him at the end of his life.

Teddy Abrams, conductor
Ray Chen, violin
Dashon Burton, baritone

TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto
-Intermission-
Michael TILSON THOMAS Whitman Songs
BERNSTEIN Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

Ray Chen plays Tchaikovsky’s beloved Violin Concerto, the first work the composer completed after his separation from his disastrous marriage and a piece he almost dedicated to his student – and likely lover and inspiration, Iosif Kotek. 120 years later, Michael Tilson Thomas lovingly set three of Walt Whitman poems about longing and belonging for baritone and orchestra. Leonard Bernstein’s star-crossed lovers close the program in an iconic love letter to New York and love itself.

Friday afternoon's performance by the vocal soloist is generously supported by the Ethan Ayer Vocal Soloist Fund.

Saturday evening's concert is generously supported by Mr. C. Thomas Brown.

Saturday's performance of Whitman Songs is supported by John Lowell Thorndike, former BSO trustee, treasurer, vice president, and lifelong advocate for the performance of contemporary music.

Thomas Wilkins, conductor

Bracha Malkin and Bonnie Bewick, violins 
Danny Kim, viola 
Mickey Katz, cello

DOHNÁNYI Serenade in C, Op. 10
Oleg PONOMAREV (Arr. Bonnie BEWICK) Polonez, for string quartet
TCHAIKOVSKY String Quartet No. 1 in D, Op. 11 

Edwin Outwater, conductor

COLTRANE Legacy for Orchestra
Arranged and curated by Carlos Simon

This concert is performed without intermission.

Considered one of the most preeminent jazz artists of all time, and one of the most influential musical artists of any genre, John Coltrane has truly played a part in shaping the music of today. Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra is a new live concert experience re-framing some of John Coltrane’s most popular and influential works with lush orchestrations, accompanied by exclusive and recently exhibited personal photographs of John Coltrane.

Thomas Wilkins, conductor

Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor 
Erin Morley, soprano
Avery Amereau, mezzo-soprano
Simon Bode, tenor
Morris Robinson, bass
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
 James Burton, conductor

Arvo PÄRT Tabula Rasa
-Intermission-
MOZART Requiem

This concert probes the intersection of quiet contemplation and fervent prayers, beginning with Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa — an introspective piece exploring silence, space, and spirituality that quietly changed the shape of 20th century music.

Friday afternoon’s performance by Erin Morley is generously supported by a gift in loving memory of Alan J. Dworsky.

This week's performances by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus are supported by the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Fund for Voice and Chorus.

Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor
Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin

Adolphus HAILSTORK Lachrymosa: 1919
STRAVINSKY Symphony in Three Movements
ELGAR Violin Concerto

Dima Slobodeniouk leads three works, all notable for their proximity to wartime. Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto can be seen in retrospect as an idyllic calm before the storm of World War I. Adolphus Hailstork’s Lachrymosa: 1919 explores the Red Summer of 1919, a deadly backlash against Black American prosperity in the wake of the war. Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements was the composer’s dark reaction to the universal devastation of World War II.

Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor
Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin

Adolphus HAILSTORK Lachrymosa: 1919
STRAVINSKY Symphony in Three Movements
-Intermission-
ELGAR Violin Concerto

Dima Slobodeniouk leads three works, all notable for their proximity to wartime. Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto can be seen in retrospect as an idyllic calm before the storm of World War I. Adolphus Hailstork’s Lachrymosa: 1919 explores the Red Summer of 1919, a deadly backlash against Black American prosperity in the wake of the war. Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements was the composer’s dark reaction to the universal devastation of World War II.

Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra (BYSO)
Marta Żurad, conductor
Matt Roberts, magician

Ala Jojatu and Sophie Wang, violins 
Mary Ferrillo, viola 
Will Chow, cello

MOZART String Quartet No. 19 in C, K.465, Dissonance
WEINER String Trio in G minor, Op. 6

Anna Handler, conductor (Langer)
Gilbert Kalish, piano

Elena LANGER Five Reflections on Water, for winds and strings
Sofia GUBAIDULINA Sonata for double bass and piano
-Intermission-
SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57

Andris Nelsons, conductor

ALL-SHOSTAKOVICH program
Symphony No. 6
Symphony No. 11, The Year 1905

The first in 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. Written more than 50 years after the Russian Revolution and during another point of political and historical upheaval, Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony is a revisitation of the events of Bloody Sunday, integrating Russian folk and revolutionary songs. The final movement is simultaneously a rallying cry and a warning to future tyrants.

Andris Nelsons, conductor

ALL-SHOSTAKOVICH program
Symphony No. 6
-Intermission-
Symphony No. 11, The Year 1905
 

The first in 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. Written more than 50 years after the Russian Revolution and during another point of political and historical upheaval, Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony is a revisitation of the events of Bloody Sunday, integrating Russian folk and revolutionary songs. The final movement is simultaneously a rallying cry and a warning to future tyrants.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Yo-Yo Ma, cello

ALL-SHOSTAKOVICH program
Cello Concerto No. 1
Symphony No. 11, The Year 1905

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. Yo-Yo Ma brings the specter of resistance to the stage. Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto is a prime example of the composer using music to protest an authoritarian regime; the cello stands defiant against the orchestra, often playing out its own theme not reflected in the ensemble, until it disseminates into a wild cadenza and is whisked away into a sudden abrupt end.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Mitsuko Uchida, piano

BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4
-Intermission-
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 15

Mitsuko Uchida has, from an early age, been considered a standout interpreter of Beethoven. The Fourth is considered the first of Beethoven’s piano concertos to depart from the format prescribed by Mozart (an orchestral introduction with a dramatic solo entrance). The concerto’s opening lets the instrument speak for itself — intimately and delicately so—to lead the way for the rest of the ensemble. Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Symphony is his last symphony and is full of quotations, codes, clues, and ambiguity. This is an experience defying description that invites the listener to create their own personal interpretation.

Corporate support for Thursday evening's concert is generously provided by Hemenway & Barnes.

Friday afternoon’s performance by Mitsuko Uchida is generously supported by the Nathan R. Miller Family Guest Artist Fund.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
 James Burton, conductor

Aleksandra VREBALOV New work for chorus and orchestra (world premiere; BSO commission)
STRAVINSKY Symphony of Psalms
-Intermission-
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 6

This program pairs Shostakovich’s introspective, classically elegant Sixth Symphony with Stravinsky’s austerely profound Symphony of Psalms, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky for the BSO’s 50th anniversary. In fact, Shostakovich so revered Stravinsky’s piece that he made a two-piano arrangement of the score. The BSO commissioned Aleksandra Vrebalov to compose a psalm setting using the same musical forces as Stravinsky’s masterpiece. Originally from the former Yugoslavia and winner of the prestigious 2023 Grawemeyer Award, Vrebalov composes music of deeply spiritual humanism influenced in part by Byzantine chant.

This week's performances by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus are supported by the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Fund for Voice and Chorus.

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.