BSO/Classical New England — 2025/05/31-25

 As we await the start of the BSO's Tanglewod Season this year, WCRB continues with encore broadcasts from last summer's season. Here's their synopsis of the concert they're revisiting this evening:

Saturday, May 31, 2025
8:00 PM

Jean-Yves Thibaudet is the soloist in Khachaturian’s vibrant, colorful Piano Concerto, part of a program that also includes Tania León's Pulitzer prize-winning Stride and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the “Pathétique.”

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Tania LEÓN STRIDE
Aram KHACHATURIAN Piano Concerto
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6, Pathétique

This concert was originally broadcast on July 27, 2024, and is no longer available on demand.

For further information, including links to the program notes for each piece you can visit the performance detail page:

Tanglewood

Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox/Stockbridge, MA 

Boston Symphony Orchestra 
Andris Nelsons, conductor 
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Tania LEÓN Stride 
KHACHATURIAN Piano Concerto
-Intermission-
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6, Pathétique

In tribute to Serge Koussevitzky’s legacy, Andris Nelsons and the BSO dedicate this concert series to the trailblazer. In the spirit of Koussevitzky’s passion for promoting contemporary music and composers, this concert features Tania León's STRIDE, a Pulitzer prize-winning work of resilience and surprise. 

Jean-Yves Thibaudet also joins for Khachaturian’s vibrant, colorful Piano Concerto, and the concert ends with Tchaikovsky’s moving, yearning Pathétique Symphony.

The Tchaikovsky is a staple of the orchestral repertoire. I don't have a clear memory of the other works, but I think the concert should be worth hearing.

BSO/Classical New England — 2025/05/24-26

 Here's the program for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday, May 24.

WCRB tells us:

Saturday, May 24, 2025
8:00 PM

The Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons continue their journey through all nine Beethoven Symphonies in a special Friday night broadcast of a program that includes the lyric and joyful Symphony No. 4 and the iconic Symphony No. 5.

Andris Nelsons, conductor

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

This concert was originally broadcast on January 17, 2025, and is no longer available on demand.

Learn more about the cultural impact of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony from Matthew Guerrieri, author of The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination, in a conversation with WCRB's Brian McCreath.

Learn more about the BSO's "Beethoven and Romanticism" festival.

You can also check out the program notes linked to the BSO performance detail page, which tells us the following:

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

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.

Sunday, May 25.

Per WCRB:

Sunday, May 25, 2025
8:00 PM

Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the third part of an epic survey of all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies, including the Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral Symphony, and the Symphony No. 7, a work infused with dynamic rhythmic energy.

Andris Nelsons, conductor

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

This concert was originally broadcast on January 18, 2025, and is no longer available on demand.

Learn more about the BSO's "Beethoven and Romanticism" festival.

From the performance detail page:

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

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.

Monday, May 26.

For your Memorial Day enjoyment.

Here's WCRB's blurb:

Monday, May 26, 2025
8:00 PM

The Boston Symphony’s Beethoven cycle, led by Music Director Andris Nelsons, culminates with the playful Symphony No. 8 and the Symphony No. 9, featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and a stellar cast of soloists in its iconic final movement, the “Ode to Joy.”

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Sara Jakubiak, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
David Butt Philip, tenor
Andrè Schuen, baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
 James Burton, conductor

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

This concert was last broadcast on January 25, 2025, and is no longer available on demand.

Learn more about the BSO's "Beethoven and Romanticism" festival.

The BSO performance detail page puts it this way:

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Sara Jakubiak, soprano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
David Butt Philip, 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 is all worth hearing, of course.

BSO/Classical New England — 2025/05/23

 The weekend begins this evening. https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2024-10-30/beethovens-revolutionary-early-symphonies-nos-1-2-3 WCRB says:

Friday, May 23, 2025
8:00 PM

Andris Nelsons conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the first part of their exploration of all of Beethoven’s symphonies. The program begins with a young Beethoven absorbing the influence of Mozart in his Symphony No. 1, proceeds through his shockingly advanced Symphony No. 2, and culminates in the legendary Symphony No. 3, the Eroica.

Andris Nelsons, conductor

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

This concert was originally broadcast on January 11, 2025, and is no longer available on demand.

Hear and read an interview with Nathan Cole, the Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony.

Learn more about the BSO's "Beethoven and Romanticism" festival.

The BSO performance detail page from January: https://www.bso.org/events/beethoven-symphonies-1-2-3?performance=2025-01-11-20:00 

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

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

Enjoy.

BSO/Classical New England — 2025/05/17

 Again this week the encore broadcast is taken from last year's Tanglewood season. Most of it is the concert of July 14, but it is supplemented by one piece from the concert of July 8. Here's WCRB's synopsis:

Saturday, May 17, 2025
8:00 PM

Augustin Hadelich is the soloist in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in a Boston Symphony concert led by Andris Nelsons that also features Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 and Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Forward Into Light, a meditation on “perseverance, bravery, and alliance.”

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Augustin Hadelich, violin

Sarah KIRKLAND SNIDER Forward into Light 
Sergei PROKOFIEV Violin Concerto No. 2
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Ballade in A minor (Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Na'Zir McFadden, conductor, recorded on July 8, 2024)
Antonín DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 7

This concert was originally broadcast on July 14, 2024, and is no longer available on demand.

The program notes for the three works on the July 14 concert are available on the performance detail page for that concert.  https://www.bso.org/events/snider-prokofiev-dvorak?performance=2024-07-14-14:30  That page also provides the following overall description:

Tanglewood

Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox/Stockbridge, MA 

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor 
Augustin Hadelich, violin

Sarah Kirkland SNIDER Forward into Light 
PROKOFIEV Violin Concerto No. 2 
DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 7
 

Written as part of the NY Philharmonic’s “Project 19” — which commissioned 19 female composers to write new works commemorating the ratification of the 19th Amendment — Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Forward Into Light is a meditation on “perseverance, bravery, and alliance.” The title is derived from a suffrage slogan, and the music contains quotes from the woman’s suffrage movement anthem, “March of the Women.”

Grammy-winner Augustin Hadelich rounds out the program with Prokofiev’s intense Violin Concerto No. 2, and Andris Nelsons leads the BSO in Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 – sometimes called the composer's greatest symphony.

I can't find a performance detail page for the Coleridge-Taylor piece, but most of his music is good.

The Globe reviewer was happy with the July 14 concert; the Intelligencer didn't review it.

 I wrote about the July 14 concert back then, and I think it should be worth listening to along with the interpolation from the 8th.

P.S. Next weekend, WCRB will give us four evenings of rebroadcasts: the full cycle of Beethoven symphonies from last winter. They'll begin with Nos. 1, 2, and 3 on Friday evening of the long weekend, followed by 4 and 5 on Saturday, 6 and 7 on Sunday, and 8 and 9 on Monday, all at 8"00 p.m. Boston Time.

BSO/Classical New England — 2025/05/10

 This evening's encore broadcast is from last summer at Tanglewood. WCRB tells us:

Saturday, May 10, 2025
8:00 PM

The Boston Ballet and its artistic director Mikko Nissinen join Andris Nelsons and the BSO for an evening celebrating dance and storytelling. Andris Nelsons leads the Boston Symphony in Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète, a tale of the Greek god Apollo and three muses of artistic inspiration, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a searing and dramatic piece inspired by the story of “One Thousand and One Nights.”

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor

Igor STRAVINSKY Apollon musagète*
Nikolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade

*Apollon musagète is being danced at Tanglewood by the Boston Ballet

This concert was originally broadcast on July 12, 2024, and is no longer available on demand.

Here's what the BSO said on their performance detail page:

Tanglewood

Koussevitzky Music Shed, Lenox/Stockbridge, MA 

Boston Symphony Orchestra 
Andris Nelsons, conductor 
Boston Ballet 
 Mikko Nissinen, artistic director

STRAVINSKY Apollo
 Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust 
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade
 

The Boston Ballet and its artistic director Mikko Nissinen join Andris Nelsons and the BSO for an evening celebrating dance and storytelling. Stravinsky’s Apollo opens the program with a tale of the Greek god Apollo and three muses of artistic inspiration; choreographer George Balanchine described this collaboration with Stravinsky as “a turning point” in his life for its innovative marriage of classical themes and jazz ideas. Also on the program is the mighty Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, a vivid portrayal of the Arabian Nights tales, brought to life with searing and dramatic music.

Fortunately, the links to the program notes still work today. I was away at the time I'd have needed to write about this concert at the time. Sheherazade is enduringly popular, and I think the Appolon Musagète is okay. Neither the Globe nor the Intelligencer has a review I can find.

While thiis isn't quite must listen level, it won't be a waste of time, I think.

BSO — 2025/05/03

 This is the last concert broadcast of the curreent BSO Symphony Hall Season. They'll be back live at Tanglewood on July 5. After this evening until then I expect we'll be treated to "encore broadcasts" on Saturday evenings.

This evening they wrap up the "Decoding Shostakovich" series. WCRB synopsizes as follows: https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2024-11-04/baibe-skride-and-the-boston-symphony-orchestra

Saturday, May 3, 2025
8:00 PM

Latvian violinist Baiba Skride brings her signature dulcet tones to Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The whole piece is filled with Jewish klezmer influence at a time when antisemitism was on the rise in the USSR, a demonstration of Shostakovich’s ability to fold messages of revolution and resistance into his music.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Baiba Skride, violin

ALL-SHOSTAKOVICH program
Violin Concerto No. 1
Symphony No. 8

The BSO;s performance detail page provides links to the program notes in the booklets given to those in attendance and offers this oveerall description:

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

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.

So far there is no review in either the Globe or the Intelligencer, so the only thing to helppyou decide whether to listen — apart from having heard Shosty's music in the past — is what you can glean from the program notes. So there you have it. I don't consider it "must listen," but you might want to give it a try.