Fall 2022 BSO NOW Video-On-Demand Programming Includes September Opening Night Concert And More

The two fall concerts featured at the start of the 2022-23 BSO NOW offerings shine a spotlight on piano soloists, one making his BSO debut, the other making a welcome return.

For the first concerts of the 2022-23 Symphony Hall season, Pittsburgh-born pianist Awadagin Pratt performed a work written for him by American composer Jessie Montgomery (Rounds, for piano and string orchestra) and J.S. Bach's Concerto in A, BWV 1055, September 22 and 23. In 1992, Pratt became the first African-American to win the Naumburg International Piano Competition, launching an active career as a performer, a recording artist, and professor of piano at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Also on this program are A Toast!, written by John Williams to welcome Andris Nelsons to the BSO and Gustav Holst's evocative The Planets, featuring the Lorelei Ensemble (Beth Willer, conductor). This content, offered as individual works, is available beginning today, October 7, at bso.org/now.

Throughout her long career, Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida has garnered acclaim for her interpretations of works by the Classical and Romantic masters. In this first installment of her multi-year collaboration with Nelsons and the BSO encompassing the five Beethoven piano concertos, she performs the last, the monumental Emperor. Also on this program, which took place October 27-30, is Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, his best-known work in this genre. Criticism in the Soviet press of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District put Shostakovich in a precarious position with Soviet authorities. His response was the powerful and outwardly triumphant Fifth Symphony, which served to save the composer from the fate of many other artists during Stalin's regime. This content will be available beginning on November 10 at bso.org/now.

BSO NOW-the BSO's concert streaming platform that launched on November 19, 2020, featuring recordings from Symphony Hall and other locations and available through bso.org/now-was created as an extension of the BSO's online offerings designed in response to the live performance hiatus imposed by regulations around the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 26, 2020, the BSO launched its first formal series of digital offerings, including BSO at Home and BSO HomeSchool, followed by Boston Pops at Home, the Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival, and Encore BSO Recitals (available at bso.org, bostonpops.org, and tanglewood.org).

The success of these programs and the current BSO NOW online content, which have generated millions of interactions-both directly with the digital concert content and indirectly through posts on the orchestra's social media channels about that content-has been an inspiration for the orchestra to continue to explore new ways of reaching its music community and beyond with new, innovative, and compelling programming. BSO NOW has so far produced well over 250 hours of content.