Boston Symphony Orchestra to Perform Two Programs at Carnegie Hall in 2024

As part of Carnegie Hall's 2023-24 season, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will perform two programs on January 29 and 30, 2024, led by BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons. The BSO programs to be performed at New York's Carnegie Hall will also be featured in the BSO's 2023-24 season at Symphony Hall in Boston. Mr. Nelsons and the BSO will announce complete details of the 2023-24 BSO season on April 13.

January 29, 2024: Nelsons Conducts the New York Premiere of a New Work by Carnegie Hall's Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair Tania León (a BSO Co-Commission with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig) on a Program That Also Includes Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand with Seong-Jin Cho and Stravinsky's Iconic The Rite of Spring

Andris Nelsons leads the New York premiere of a BSO co-commissioned orchestral work by Cuban-American composer Tania León, a recent Kennedy Center honoree, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and one of today's most vibrant composers. Also on the program, the acclaimed Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho performs Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which Ravel completed in 1930 for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm due to an injury in World War I. Ravel's fascination with jazz shows up in the concerto's syncopated rhythms and energy, a perfect complement to the concert's final work, Igor Stravinsky's primal ballet score The Rite of Spring. 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 concert is part of the citywide Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice Festival, exploring one of the most complex and consequential chapters in modern human history: Germany's Weimar Republic of 1919-1933. Through dozens of musical performances at Carnegie Hall and multidisciplinary offerings at leading cultural and academic institutions across New York City and beyond, the festival-which takes places from January through May 2024-will examine the arts and culture that flourished as artists sought bold and innovative avenues for creative expression in this increasingly traumatic period in history.

January 30, 2024: Nelsons Conducts a Concert Performance of Shostakovich's Opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in its Entirety, with the BSO and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus

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 24-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 Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais, headlining an impressive international cast, which includes Czech tenor Pavel Černoch and Russian tenor Sergei Skorokhodov.

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.

The BSO's 2024 Carnegie Hall performances follow the orchestra's two previously announced dates this April for which tickets are currently on sale:

• On April 24, 2023, Andris Nelsons conducts Ravel's Alborada del gracioso and Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony. Acclaimed cellist Gauthier Capuçon performs the New York premiere of a BSO-commissioned cello concerto by Thierry Escaich. Program details Tickets

• On April 25, 2023, Nelsons, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and the BSO perform a program that includes Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 1 in B-flat, K.207 and the New York premiere of Thomas Adès' Air for Violin and Orchestra, composed specifically for Mutter. The concert also features two notable Sibelius works, the Symphony No. 5 and Luonnotar, featuring soprano Golda Schultz. Program details Tickets

The 2022-23 season is Andris Nelsons' ninth as the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Ray and Maria Stata Music Director. The fifteenth music director in the BSO's history, Andris Nelsons made his debut with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall in March 2011, his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, and his Symphony Hall debut in January 2013. Click here for a complete bio of BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons.

TICKET INFORMATION

Carnegie Hall subscription packages for the 2023-24 season are currently on sale through the Carnegie Hall Box Office. Single tickets for all 2023-24 performances will go on sale to Carnegie Hall subscribers and members on Monday, August 14 at 11:00 a.m., and to the general public on Monday, August 21 at 11:00 a.m.

THE BSO WITH ANDRIS NELSONS AT Carnegie Hall

January 29 & 30, 2024

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

Monday, January 29, 2024, 8 p.m.
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor

Seong-Jin Cho, piano
Tania LEÓN New work (BSO co-commission with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig; NY premiere)

RAVEL Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring

Tuesday, January 30, 2024, 7 p.m.
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Kristine Opolais, soprano (Katerina Izmailova)

Pavel Černoch, tenor (Sergei)

Sergei Skorokhodov, tenor (Zinovy Izmailov)*

Ildar Abdrazakov, bass (Boris Izmailov and Ghost of Boris)*

Michelle Trainor, soprano (Aksinya)

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)*

Joo Won Kang, baritone (Steward)*

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

* BSO Debut

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