Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons Announce Two Programs at Carnegie Hall

The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and Music Director Andris Nelsons have announced two programs as part of Carnegie Hall's 2026–27 season, each pairing a concerto performance by an acclaimed soloist with a core symphonic work emblematic of the deep relationship that the BSO and Nelsons have developed since he became BSO Music Director in 2014. The 2027 programs continue the BSO's long legacy of performing at the iconic venue since its opening in 1893.     

On April 13, 2027, 15-year-old violin sensation Himari performs Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto on a program coupled with the Russian composer's towering Fifth Symphony. The next night, cellist Yo-Yo Ma deepens his longstanding association with the BSO, joining Nelsons and the orchestra for a performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto. Closing the program is Strauss' monumental tone poem An Alpine Symphony, featuring more than 140 players, including wind and thunder machines, cowbells, and offstage horns, trumpets, and trombones.

The BSO will announce complete details of its 2026–27 season on March 19, 2026.  

Tuesday, April 13, 2027: Nelsons leads the BSO in an all-Prokofiev program featuring Symphony No. 5 and young violinist Himari in the composer's Violin Concerto No. 2 

The first of two programs, this concert spotlights young Japanese violin prodigy Himari in her Carnegie Hall debut.  Described as a “once-in-a-generation talent,” she became at age 11 the youngest student ever to be admitted to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. She will make her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut this summer at Tanglewood. This Carnegie appearance features her in one of Sergei Prokofiev's most lyrical works, the Second Violin Concerto.

The concerto, which was given its American premiere by the BSO, is paired with a Prokofiev symphony that also has a long association with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Music Director Serge Koussevitzky and the BSO gave the first American performances of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony in November 1945. At Koussevitzky's invitation, Prokofiev had been a frequent guest performer with the BSO as both piano soloist and conductor in the 1920s and '30s. Aware of the material difficulties under which Russian composers labored, Koussevitzky regularly arranged to have shipments of music paper sent from Boston to the Soviet Composers' Union, and it gave him particular pleasure to discover that the score of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, whose manuscript is now in the Boston Public Library, was written on paper that had made the long round-trip from a store on Boylston Street in Boston. To this day, the Fifth remains one of his most popular pieces, what Prokofiev himself said “[crowned] a great period of my work.”

Wednesday, April 14, 2027: Yo-Yo Ma joins Nelsons and the BSO in Elgar's Cello Concerto followed by Strauss' An Alpine Symphony (Eine Alpensinfonie)

On the second evening, the inimitable Yo-Yo Ma returns for his sixth appearance with the BSO at Carnegie. Most recently, in 2025, he performed Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto, recorded with Nelsons and the BSO that same year on the Deutsche Grammophon label. The BSO, Nelsons, and Ma were just awarded the 2026 GRAMMY for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for their recording of Shostakovich: The Cello Concertos. This time, he performs with the orchestra Elgar's elegiac Cello Concerto. Ma's special relationship with the BSO goes as far back as 1971, and this summer, it deepens further with a weeklong Tanglewood residency in which he curates programs and performances exploring the American experience.

Sharing the program with the Elgar concerto is the longest of Richard Strauss' tone poems, An Alpine Symphony (Eine Alpensinfonie), which musically depicts a mountain-climbing expedition from the composer's childhood and reflects his “adoration of eternal, glorious nature.” As with Prokofiev, the BSO played a significant role in Strauss' career. In 1904, he undertook a major tour of America that was to leave a lasting mark on the reception of his music in Europe. “The Boston orchestra is wonderful,” Strauss wrote to his father the day after his concert. “Its sound and its technique attest to a perfection that I've rarely encountered.” He led a few of his own tone poems with the orchestra, going on to tell his father that he had “conducted a wonderful concert here with one of the greatest orchestras in the world.”

Since his arrival as music director, Andris Nelsons and the BSO have developed a rich relationship with Richard Strauss' music that includes most of the tone poems and concert performances of three complete operas. In 2022, the BSO—in collaboration with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and all under the baton of Andris Nelsons—released a seven-CD, all-Strauss box set on the Deutsche Grammophon label to critical acclaim. This repertoire remains a cornerstone of Nelsons' tenure at the BSO.

Program Details

Tuesday, April 13, 2027, 8 p.m.

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Andris Nelsons, conductor

Himari, violin

ALL-PROKOFIEV program

Violin Concerto No. 2

Symphony No. 5

Wednesday, April 14, 2027, 8 p.m.

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Andris Nelsons, conductor

Yo-Yo Ma, cello

ELGAR Cello Concerto

STRAUSS An Alpine Symphony (Eine Alpensinfonie)

Ticketing