BSO — 2021/10/16

 WCRB gives the basics about this evening's concert (plus an interview with the soloist):

Lisa Batiashvili is the soloist in Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, and Andris Nelsons leads the BSO in William Grant Still's tribute to the Finnish composer, as well as a Symphonic Fantasy on Richard Strauss's opera "The Woman Without a Shadow," Saturday night at 8pm.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Lisa Batiashvili, violin

STILL Threnody: In Memory of Jan Sibelius
STRAUSS Symphonic Fantasy on Die Frau ohne Schatten
SIBELIUS Violin Concerto

To hear Lisa Batiashvili describe her deep history with Sibelius's concerto and much more, click on the player above.

Interview transcript:

The BSO performance detail page has links to program notes, performer bios (click on the thumbnails), and this description:

Acclaimed Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili returns to Symphony Hall for performances of Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. A violinist himself, Sibelius employed his distinctive, Finnish folk music-influenced style in this fiery and lyrical concerto, the final version of which was premiered under Richard Strauss’s direction in 1905. Strauss’s own Symphonic Fantasy on Die Frau ohne Schatten (“Woman Without a Shadow”) is a 1946 distillation of his fabulist 1919 opera; the BSO hasn’t played music from the opera since the 1960s under Erich Leinsdorf. The concert opens with the great American composer William Grant Still’s Threnody: In Memoriam Jan Sibelius, composed in 1965. Though from very different traditions, Still and Sibelius were known to admire one another’s music.

It might be useful to read the notes about the Still and Strauss pieces. The review in the Globe is enthusiastic, that in the Intelligencer more curmudgeonly, though informative about the music.

I wasn't there on Thursday, so I can't comment. I can say that I'm curious to hear the unfamiliar music before the intermission, and I generally find Sibelius worth hearing.

So, I'd say it's worth listening to this one on WCRB at 8:00 p.m., Boston Time.