BSO/Classical New England — 2025/11/01

 This evening the Boston Pops is performing a "Day of the Deasd" show in Symphony Hall so WCRB is giving us an encore performance of the BSO concert of October 26 last year, which they describe as follows: https://www.classicalwcrb.org/show/the-boston-symphony-orchestra/2024-08-16/pappano-thibaudet-and-the-bso

Saturday, November 1, 2025
8:00 PM

In an encore broadcast, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet brings dazzling elegance to Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Antonio Pappano conducts two works that ask deep questions of humanity. Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, with its immediately recognizable opening “sunrise,” is a musical response to Friedrich Nietzsche’s metaphysical novel of the same name. Hannah Kendall uses unusual orchestral techniques and music boxes in her recent O flower of fire, inspired by the work of Guyanese-British poet Martin Carter.

Sir Antonio Pappano, conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

Hannah KENDALL O flower of fire (American premiere)
Franz LISZT Piano Concerto No. 2
Richard STRAUSS Also sprach Zarathustra

This concert was originally broadcast on October 26, 2024, and is no longer available on demand.

Sir Antonio Pappano describes the unique qualities of Hannah Kendall's music, and previews the works by Liszt and Strauss on this program, in an interview you can hear using the player above, with the transcript below.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited for clarity):

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Sir Antonio Pappano, back here with the Boston Symphony for

I heard the Friday afternoon performance last year and posted about it then. Although the BSO performance detail page is still available, I can't find links to the program notes for each piece. Maybe you'll have better luck than I did. https://www.bso.org/events/kendall-liszt-strauss?performance=2024-10-26-20:00#overview1678804

Anyway, it seems that you nay well like it.