Symphony No. 2: Age of Anxiety
Andris Nelsons, conductor; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano
BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons continues the orchestra’s season-long celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial with the composer’s Symphony No. 2, Age of Anxiety, which features a dynamic, jazz-influenced piano part eminently suited to the style of this week’s soloist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Following intermission comes Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4, which continues the BSO and Andris Nelson’s multi-season survey of the composer’s complete symphonies. Shostakovich completed this dark but powerfully majestic work in 1936, but fears of official Soviet condemnation following a scathing criticism of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk led him to cancel the symphony’s premiere. The Fourth was first performed only in 1961.
