BSO — 2025/04/12

 Unusually, there is no BSO concert being performed in Symphony Hall this evening, so WCRB is giving us the concert they recorded yesterday evening, described as follows:

Saturday, April 12, 2025
8:00 PM

Dmitri Shostakovich often folded messages of revolution and resistance into his music during a politically turbulent time. Yo-Yo Ma brings the specter of resistance in Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto; a prime example of the composer using music to protest an authoritarian regime. The program concludes with his Symphony No. 11, The Year 1905.

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Yo-Yo Ma, cello

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

This concert will take place on Friday, April 11th and will be broadcast on Saturday, April 12th.

The BSO's performance detail page gives us the following blurb:

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Symphony Hall, Boston, MA 

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Yo-Yo Ma, cello

ALL-SHOSTAKOVICH program
Cello Concerto No. 1
-Intermission-
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.

Program notes are linked and could be interesting.

The "series looking at the music and times of Dmitri Shostakovich" is titled "Decoding Shostakovich" and runs from April 10 through May 7. There are symphony concerts and four lectures on Shostakovich and his times. I had a ticket for the Thursday concert, which had Shostakovich's Symphony No. 6 in place of the cello concerto, but I didn't go. The BSO had performed all the symphonies over the course of several years a while back. Some of them were tolerable, but I wasn't really interested in hearing them again — at least not enough to pay the cost of getting a ride home after the concert. I'll listen this evening, but with the idea that maybe I'll find something worthwhile, not that it's something I'm enthusiastic about.

There is no review in the Globe but two(!) in the Intelligencer. https://www.classical-scene.com/2025/04/11/decoding-shostakovich-6-11/ and https://www.classical-scene.com/2025/04/11/shostakovich-month/ The second one also gives a description of the whole "Decoding Shostakovich" month.

It could be "interesting."