Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons Will Bring LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK to Carnegie Hall in 2021

As part of Carnegie Hall's 2020-2021 season, announced on January 28, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will perform three programs on October 26, 2020, and April 14 and 15, 2021, led by BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons. These programs will also be featured in the BSO's 2020-2021 season at Symphony Hall in Boston. Mr. Nelsons and the BSO will announce complete details of the 2020-21 season in April.

The BSO and Music Director Andris Nelsons are joined by a frequent collaborator, the outstanding Italian-born violinist Augustin Hadelich, for Benjamin Britten's early, emotionally profound Violin Concerto. Britten began the concerto after befriending the Spanish-born violinist Antonio Brosa, who gave the premiere with the New York Philharmonic under John Barbirolli's direction at Carnegie Hall in March 1940. Opening the concert is a Haydn rarity: his Symphony No. 26, Lamentatione, a three-movement work from about 1768, takes its nickname from its use of a Gregorian chant melody linked to the Biblical Lamentations of Jeremiah. Igor Stravinsky's primal ballet score The Rite of Spring is a sonic match for its subtitle, "Pictures from pagan Russia." Soon after the ballet's riotous 1913 premiere, its score became a concert-hall staple despite-or because of-its adventurousness. Pierre Monteux, who conducted the 1913 premiere, led the BSO in the work's first New York performances at Carnegie Hall in January 1924.

The most ambitious single endeavor in the BSO and Andris Nelsons' multi-year survey of the works of Dmitri Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was also an immense undertaking for its twenty-four-year-old composer. He began the score in late 1930, fresh from having seen his absurdist first opera, The Nose, through its first production. Working with Alexander Preys, his co-librettist for The Nose, Shostakovich turned for the opera's scenario to Nikolai Leskov's 1865 novella Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, a dark portrayal of Katarina Ismailova, the oppressed, ambitious, and ultimately murderous wife of a provincial merchant. Singing the role of Katarina in this performance is celebrated soprano Kristine Opolais, headlining an impressive international cast, which includes tenor Brandon Jovanovich, tenor Sergei Skorokhodov, and bass-baritone Vladimir Vaneyev.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was a critical and popular worldwide sensation following its 1934 premiere, but that success helped bring about the greatest crisis in Shostakovich's life. After Josef Stalin attended a performance of the opera in January 1936, an unsigned editorial titled "Muddle instead of Music," unequivocally damning the opera, appeared in the newspaper Pravda. Shostakovich and his allies immediately understood it as an official condemnation as well as a warning to comply to increasingly constrained Soviet artistic styles. The composer responded by hastily withdrawing his searching Fourth Symphony and replacing it with the ostensibly heroic, triumphant Fifth, thereby surviving the first of many confrontations with Stalin and the Soviet regime.

Andris Nelsons leads the New York premiere of a BSO-commissioned orchestral work by New York City-born composer Julia Adolphe, one of the most vibrant accomplished young composers in the U.S. The piece receives its world premiere in Boston in March 2021. The acclaimed English pianist Paul Lewis joins Mr. Nelsons and the orchestra for Mozart's final piano concerto. It was completed in January 1791, nearly three years after he wrote its immediate predecessor in the genre, and its subtlety and harmonic adventurousness show a continued expansion of the composer's already astonishing expressive and technical range. It was with this piece Mozart made his final concert appearance in March 1791.

Among Dvorák's symphonies, the darkly majestic, masterful Symphony No. 7 is closest to the Germanic tradition. Requested by London's Royal Philharmonic Society and premiered in London under the composer's direction in April 1885, the symphony might be seen as a gift to that city following its rapturous embrace of his Stabat Mater and Symphony No. 6, works that helped fuel his international reputation well beyond Central Europe.

The 2019-20 season, Andris Nelsons' sixth as the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Ray and Maria Stata Music Director, marks his fifth anniversary in that position. Named Musical America's 2018 Artist of the Year, Mr. Nelsons leads fifteen of the BSO's twenty-six weeks of concerts this season, ranging from repertoire favorites by Beethoven, Dvorák, Gershwin, Grieg, Mozart, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky to world and American premieres of BSO-commissioned works from Eric Nathan, Betsy Jolas, Arturs Maskats, and HK Gruber. The season also brings the continuation of his complete Shostakovich symphony cycle with the orchestra, and collaborations with an impressive array of guest artists, including a concert performance of Tristan und Isolde, Act III-one of three BSO programs he will also conduct at Carnegie Hall-with Jonas Kaufmann and Emily Magee in the title roles. In addition, February 2020 brings a major tour to Asia in which Maestro Nelsons and the BSO give their first concerts together in Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

In February 2018, Andris Nelsons became Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester (GHO) Leipzig, in which capacity he also brings the BSO and GHO together for a unique multi-dimensional alliance including a BSO/GHO Musician Exchange program and an exchange component within each orchestra's acclaimed academy for advanced music studies. A major highlight of the BSO/GHO Alliance is a focus on complementary programming, through which the BSO celebrates "Leipzig Week in Boston" and the GHO celebrates "Boston Week in Leipzig," thereby highlighting each other's musical traditions through uniquely programmed concerts, chamber music performances, archival exhibits, and lecture series. For this season's "Leipzig Week in Boston," under Maestro Nelsons' leadership in November, the entire Gewandhausorchester Leipzig comes to Symphony Hall for joint concerts with the BSO as well as two concerts of its own.

In summer 2015, following his first season as music director, Andris Nelsons' contract with the BSO was extended through the 2021-22 season. In November 2017, he and the orchestra toured Japan together for the first time. They have so far made three European tours together: immediately following the 2018 Tanglewood season, when they played concerts in London, Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, Lucerne, Paris, and Amsterdam; in May 2016, a tour that took them to eight cities in Germany, Austria, and Luxembourg; and, after the 2015 Tanglewood season, a tour that took them to major European capitals and the Lucerne, Salzburg, and Grafenegg festivals.

The fifteenth music director in the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons made his BSO debut at Carnegie Hall in March 2011, his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, and his BSO subscription series debut in January 2013. His recordings with the BSO, all made live in concert at Symphony Hall, include the complete Brahms symphonies on BSO Classics; Grammy-winning recordings on Deutsche Grammophon of Shostakovich's symphonies 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 11 (The Year 1905) as part of a complete Shostakovich symphony cycle for that label; and a recent two-disc set pairing Shostakovich's symphonies 6 and 7 (Leningrad). This past November, a new release on Naxos features Andris Nelsons and the orchestra in the world premieres of BSO-commissioned works by Timo Andres, Eric Nathan, Sean Shepherd, and George Tsontakis. Under an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon, Andris Nelsons is also recording the complete Bruckner symphonies with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the complete Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic.

During the 2019-20 season, Andris Nelsons continues his ongoing collaborations with the Vienna Philharmonic. Throughout his career, he has also established regular collaborations with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, and has been a regular guest at the Bayreuth Festival and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Andris Nelsons began his career as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra before studying conducting. He was music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 2008 to 2015, principal conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany, from 2006 to 2009, and music director of Latvian National Opera from 2003 to 2007.

TICKET INFORMATION

Carnegie Hall subscription packages for the 2020-2021 season are currently on sale through the Carnegie Hall Box Office. Single tickets for all 2020-2021 performances will go on sale to Carnegie Hall subscribers and members on August 10, and to the general public on August 19.

THE BSO WITH ANDRIS NELSONS AT CARNEGIE HALL

October 26, 2020 AND APRIL 14 & 15, 2021
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

Monday, October 26, 2020

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Augustin Hadelich, violin
HAYDN Symphony No. 26 in D minor, Lamentatione
BRITTEN Violin Concerto
STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring

Wednesday, April 14, 2021, 7 p.m.

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Kristine Opolais, soprano (Katerina Izmailova)
Brandon Jovanovich, tenor (Sergei)
Sergei Skorokhodov, tenor (Zinovy Izmailov)
Vladimir Vaneyev, bass (Boris Izmailov and Ghost of Boris)
Miranda Keys, soprano (Female Convict)
Michelle Trainor, soprano (Aksinya)
Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, mezzo-soprano (Sonyetka)
Matthew DiBattista, tenor (Teacher)
Charles Blandy, Neil Ferreira, and Yeghishe Manucharyan, tenors (Foremen)
Charles Blandy, tenor (Drunken Guest)
Yeghishe Manucharyan, tenor (Coachman)
Andrey Popov, tenor (Shabby Peasant)
David Kravitz, baritone (Millhand)
Dmytro Kalmuchyn, baritone (Porter)
Sir Willard White, bass-baritone (Old Convict)
Patrick Guetti, bass (Officer and Sentry)
Goran Juric, bass (Priest)
Anatoli Sivko, bass (Chief of Police)
Sava Vemic, bass (Policeman)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
James Burton, conductor
SHOSTAKOVICH Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Sung in Russian with English supertitles

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Paul Lewis, piano
Julia ADOLPHE New work (NY premiere; BSO co-commission)
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat, K.595
DVORÁK Symphony No. 7