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Andris Nelsons - Boston Symphony

Shostakovich - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11

Deutsche Grammophon

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One-on-One with BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons
Andris Nelsons leads first BSO rehearsal
The BSO and Andris Nelsons announce a new partnrship with Deutsche Grammophon
1 Shostakovich Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43 / Allegretto poco moderato 14:56  
2 Presto 11:47  
3 Moderato con moto 8:24  
4 Largo 6:52  
5 Allegro 22:25  
6 Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103 / The Palace Square (Adagio) 17:15  
7 The Ninth of January (Allegro - Adagio - Allegro - Adagio) 18:46  
8 Eternal Memory (Adagio) 12:28  
9 The Tocsin (Allegro non troppo)  
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The Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Andris Nelsons will release the latest instalment in their Grammy Award-winning cycle of Shostakovich's symphonies on Deutsche Grammophon – Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11, two works that highlight the composer's life-threatening relationship with Stalin and the Soviet régime. The album is set for international release on July 6.

Raised in Latvia during the Soviet Union's dying years, Andris Nelsons acknowledges that the political conditions under which Shostakovich worked inevitably influenced his compositions – yet his music transcends the circumstances of its creation.

 "I want to distance myself from the political situation," the conductor comments. "Yes, I would say that the Fourth Symphony shows a big protest against what the Soviet Composers Union expected as a style of music. At the same time, Shostakovich was very interested in music from other countries. He was looking behind the political curtain, which is what music should do. His friends and colleagues advised him not to perform the work, because it would risk his life, which is why he put it away for over twenty years. The Fourth Symphony shows the direction he would have taken if he had not been accused of being an anti-communistic composer. Performing it now, we see how it stands apart from politics. It's a masterpiece by a genius that speaks about universal things."

  • Andris Nelsons's scrupulous attention to detail & the BSO's sophisticated beauty, combine for fine-tuned mastery in Shostakovich's last and most refined symphony / BBC Music Magazine
    Posted At: August 5, 2021

    BBC Music Magazine's Michael Beek writes.....Nelsons's scrupulous, atmospheric attention to dynamic detail, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's sophisticated beauty and perfect engineering combine to give us fine-tuned mastery in Shostakovich's last and most refined symphony, the Fifteenth. Until now, Haitink's with the London Philharmonic has been my benchmark, and I still prefer his pace for the edge-o...

  • Andris Nelsons, BSO - Shostakovich: Sym. No. 1 in F Minor, I. Allegretto - Allegro non troppo makes CRB 'favorite tunes for July'
    Posted At: July 22, 2021

    GBH Brian McCreath writes......For July, our favorite tunes include vacation jams, nostalgic hits, hyperpop beats, and unmissable classical recordings. Pop in your headphones, and let's get started. This series highlights our favorite music of the moment – discoveries we've made when we're at home cooking or cleaning, at the office, or out and about. Classical or otherwise, old, new, o...

  • BSO MD - Andris Nelsons describes 'The Spirit of Beethoven' with 99.5CRB - Boston
    Posted At: February 16, 2021

    CRB's BRIAN MCCREATH writes.....Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andris Nelsons describes the three online performances he conducts, each of them featuring Beethoven symphonies, and works inspired by them, written by composers of our time. In January 2020, Nelsons and the BSO were looking ahead to a concert tour of Asia, followed by the last chapters of the 2019-2020 season. The tour, how...

  • This Andris Nelsons - BSO account of Shostakovich haunts the mind long after audition / Classical Music Sentinel
    Posted At: April 22, 2019

    The booklet notes state that of his Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54 from 1939, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) said: "Here I wanted to express feelings of springtime, joy and youth." And that is readily apparent within the middle and last movements, with the final movement in particular sounding more like "Rossini meets Circus Music". And I love the way Andris Nelsons hams it up and really brings it ho...

  • Andris Nelsons, BSO - Shostakovich: Under Stalin's Shadow / Sym 6&7 is WFMT: Featured New Release
    Posted At: February 26, 2019

    Following upon their previous Grammy-winning releases on Deutsche Grammophon of Shostakovich's Symphonies Nos. 5, 8, 9, and 10, this new set from Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra turns to two symphonies written in the shadow of World War II: Symphony No. 7, Leningrad, which represents the resistance of the Russian people to the Nazi siege of that city, and the rarely heard, multi-faceted ...

  • Listen, and watch the director; he's great / The Tech
    Posted At: February 22, 2018

    During Leipzig week in Boston, MIT student Erica Weng witnessed in Symphony Hall, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, perform music by Bach, Schumann, Sean Shepherd, and Mendelssohn. This was her first BSO convert and she wrote a review. Is the average age of the orchestral audience increasing? It definitely doesn't seem to be decreasing. When you're the youngest member in the...

  • Tanglewood Music Festival readies for another highly anticipated season / TVOvermind
    Posted At: January 28, 2018

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  • Shostakovich's late, luminous symphony of songs / The Boston Globe
    Posted At: January 27, 2018

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  • A year in the charmed life of Andris Nelsons / WBUR: Boston
    Posted At: December 30, 2017

    His office is just a box to stand on: no walls, no doors, not even a chair. But when he's done with his work on the podium, thousands of people rise up and cheer. The life of Andris Nelsons is a heady experience. Famous? He's that. Venerable organizations in Vienna, Leipzig, London and Boston eagerly vie for his time. He travels with a posse of hundreds, and performs in America, Europe and Asia. He makes...

  • Musical America names BSO's Andris Nelsons - 2018 Artist of the Year / The Berkshire Eagle
    Posted At: October 19, 2017

    Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons has been named 2018 Artist of the Year by Musical America, an online and weekly E newsletter characterized on its website as "the meeting place for the international performing arts community." Also honored in the 57th Annual Musical America Awards are composer Mason Bates, violinist Augustin Hadelich, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, and music educator ...

  • Boston Symphony Orchestra receives the ECHO KLASSIK Award for 'Ensemble/Orchestra'
    Posted At: July 27, 2017

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  • BSO set for Wagner - Das Rheingold performance at Tanglewood / MassLive interview with Andris Nelsons
    Posted At: July 10, 2017

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  • Andris Nelsons to speak at Harvard / The Boston Globe
    Posted At: March 16, 2017

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  • BSO and Beethoven / Boston Globe review
    Posted At: February 18, 2017

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  • Andris Nelsons & BSO - Shostakovich: Under Stalin's Shadow wins GRAMMY for 'Best Orchestral Performance'
    Posted At: February 13, 2017

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  • Andris Nelsons & BSO are buoyant and massive in Bach: B minor Mass / Boston Globe review
    Posted At: February 4, 2017

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  • Andris Nelsons - BSO return to Canada after 21 year absence / Musical Toronto
    Posted At: January 18, 2017

    The Boston Symphony Orchestra has announced a two-city tour of Canada, with performances at Montreal's Maison Symphonique on Saturday, March 4, and Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall on Sunday, March 5. The move breaks a 21-year absence of the BSO in Canada, with their last visit in 1995 under the baton of Canadian conductor Malcolm Lowe. Led by Music Director Andris Nelsons, the tour dates will feature piano co...

  • Andris Nelsons, aware of the strengths within him, leads the CBSO / Birmingham Post
    Posted At: January 14, 2017

    Andris Nelsons returned to conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall. The hard-nosed American atmosphere seems to have stiffened Nelsons and have made him more aware of the strengths within him. This extra layer of self-confidence certainly emerged in his conducting of Peter Maxwell Davies' Trumpet Concerto (contemporary music has been until now a small quotient in ...

  • Andris Nelsons & BSO - Shostakovich: Symphonies 5, 8, 9 makes HAARETZ - Best Classical Albums of 2016
    Posted At: January 8, 2017

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    Posted At: December 26, 2016

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  • Andris Nelsons, BSO - Shostakovich Symphonies makes 'Boston Globe Top 10 Classical Albums for 2016'
    Posted At: December 23, 2016

    The Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, and Deutsche Grammophon have expanded their award-winning recording partnership by extending their original agreement, which focused primarily on Shostakovich Symphonies 5-10 (works composed during the period of Shostakovich's difficult relationship with Stalin and the Soviet regime, mid-1930s to 1953), to include live recordings of the composer's en...

  • The Andris Nelsons - BSO Ethic / WBUR Radio
    Posted At: September 28, 2016

    His baton raised above this international amalgam of musicians, Andris Nelsons represents what the Boston Symphony Orchestra has become. He and his wife, soprano Kristine Opolais, travel incessantly, and still make Europe their home. Beginning next year, he will take over the famed Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, adding that conductorship to his BSO duties. It's a historic joint appointment, spearheading a...

  • BSO Music Director - Andris Nelsons previews the new season / WGBH - Greater Boston
    Posted At: September 27, 2016

    The passionate artistic embrace between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Andris Nelsons continues to burn on high flame, now that the conductor revered by the musicians and cheered by audiences is back. "It feels like coming home," Nelsons said, "We feel so close, we really understand each other," the conductor said of his connection with the BSO musicians, pointing out that during rehear...

  • BSO: Nelsons - all-Russian opener was memorable / Boston Globe review
    Posted At: September 26, 2016

    The opening program for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 2016-2017 season was all-Russian, and even without any Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, or Rachmaninoff on the bill, it was a memorable evening, as BSO music director Andris Nelsons offered a fresh perspective on works by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Mussorgsky. The opening flourish was Shostakovich's six-minute "Festive Overture," which he wro...

  • On the eve of his third season with the BSO Andris Nelsons is all in / Boston Globe
    Posted At: September 23, 2016

    On the eve of his third season with the symphony, it's fair to say that Andris Nelsons is all in. After swooping in to conduct the season-ending Tanglewood performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony last month, the maestro has committed to spend four weeks at the summer festival in 2017, and he's preparing to lead 14 weeks of programs during the upcoming BSO season - his two largest time commi...

  • Andris Nelsons wins 2016 Gramophone 'Orchestral' award
    Posted At: September 15, 2016

    Andris Nelsons again who won this year's Gramophone Orchestral Award for his account of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for DG. Shostakovich Under Stalin's Shadow marks the first release in a multi-year recording partnership between Deutsche Grammophon, Andris Nelsons, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The recording focuses on works composed during ...

  • Andris Nelsons conducts Beethoven 9 at Tanglewood / WQXR
    Posted At: August 30, 2016

    It's become an annual tradition of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a rite marking the end of summer in the Berkshires: a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in bucolic Tanglewood to send off audience members and musicians alike, humming "Ode to Joy." But rarely has the orchestra's music director participated in the performance. This past Sunday, music director Andris Nelsons became th...

  • Andris Nelsons/Boston Symphony - Shostakovich: 5, 8, & 9 Makes WRTI's Summertime Roundup
    Posted At: August 24, 2016

    WRTI's Mark Pinto fills us in on the latest classical music CDs Saturdays at 5 pm on Classical New Releases. Here are five newly released recordings he recommends. Take a look! Boston Symphony Orchestra, Shostakovich Under Stalin's Shadow: Symphonies 5, 8, 9 - Riveting orchestral playing and spectacular sound add up to a knockout Shostakovich recording by the Boston Symphony. Critically accla...

  • Andris Nelsons - BSO win 2016 Gramophone Award / The Boston Globe
    Posted At: August 23, 2016

    Gramophone, a British monthly publication viewed as a leading authority in the world of classical music and opera for close to a century now, announced 12 winners of its prestigious annual Gramophone Awards for the year's top recordings yesterday Aug. 22, 2016. Congrats to Andris Nelson and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, winning this year's Award for their Deutsche Gramophon recording of Shostak...

  • Galvanizing Tanglewood performance of 'Aida' by Nelsons & BSO / The Boston Globe
    Posted At: August 22, 2016

    Music director Andris Nelsons guest vocalists and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in the first two acts of Verdi's "Aida" Saturday night at Tanglewood. Ask someone who attended the Tanglewood performances of Berlioz's "Les Troyens" or music from Wagner's "Die Walküre" - to name two memorable occasions in the not-too-distant past - and they will tell you that few events quicken the co...

  • Andris Nelsons brings energy to Tanglewood / The Boston Globe
    Posted At: August 1, 2016

    It's true that the basic operations of Tanglewood can function without an actively engaged music director - or even, as summers in recent memory have proven, without a music director at all. But there's also no mistaking the quickening of interest and of tempo on these bucolic grounds when the orchestra's own artistic leader is around campus and on the podium. This weekend, making his first of two Ta...

  • Tanglewood return feels like coming home for Andris Nelsons / The Berkshire Eagle
    Posted At: July 29, 2016

    The passionate artistic embrace between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Andris Nelsons continues to burn on high flame, now that the conductor revered by the musicians and cheered by audiences is back on the Tanglewood grounds for his third summer. For the first of his two weeks at the orchestra's summer home, Nelsons is conducting all three Shed concerts this weekend - Friday and Sa...

  • Andris Nelsons | BSO - Under Stalin's Shadow / WFMT: New Release Of the Week
    Posted At: May 29, 2016

    For their second release on Deutsche Grammophon, following up on their Grammy-winning recording of the Symphony No 10, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra are heard in live performances of Dmitri Shostakovich's popular, pre-war Fifth Symphony, the darkly compelling mid-war Eighth, and the elusive, post-victory Ninth. Also included are excerpts from Shostakovich's incidental music for a farci...

  • Andris Nelsons | BSO - Under Stalin's Shadow: Shostakovich Sym 5,8,9 / NPR: First Listen
    Posted At: May 19, 2016

    How to encapsulate the incredible life and times of Dmitri Shostakovich? His story of tragedy and triumph is the stuff of Hollywood political thrillers. Rocketing to stardom at 19, the Soviet Union's leading composer later runs afoul of Stalin and fears for his life until the dictator's death - all while writing music of extraordinary intensity (and occasional insignificance), eventually becoming...

  • Crossover Media Projects pick up 6 Awards on 58th Annual GRAMMY's
    Posted At: February 16, 2016

    Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album: Maria Schneider Orchestra, The Thompson Fields Maria also won for 'Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) ' with arranger (David Bowie) from Nothing Has Changed on Columbia/Legacy Best Jazz Instrumental Album: John Scofield, Past Present Best Contemporary Instrumental Album: Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest - Sylva Best Orchestral Performan...

  • Andris Nelsons' 'Shostakovich Symphony No. 10' Makes Iowa Public Radio's 2015 Mega-Meta-List
    Posted At: January 15, 2016

    Today's output of classical albums is (pardon me while I scribble on the back of an envelope) something like triple what it was a generation ago. I won't vouch for that exact ratio, but I will for Anne Midgette's description of how it feels: "Keeping up with the stream of new releases is like trying to drink from a fire hose." Now imagine trying to capture a hose's jet...
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