Andris Nelsons conducts HK Gruber, Mozart, and Prokofiev featuring Hilary Hahn, violin
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
Andris Nelsons leads a world premiere originally scheduled for spring 2020, the Viennese composer HK Gruber’s Short Stories from the Vienna Woods, a BSO co-commission with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. This orchestral score is a suite of music from the composer’s opera Tales from the Vienna Wood, based on the socially critical play by the same name by Ödön von Horváth. The title’s reference to the famous Strauss waltz mirrors the wide- ranging popular and classical variety of Gruber’s music.
Though he would later be the embodiment of the Viennese Classical composer, Wolfgang Mozart was still living in Salzburg when he wrote all five of his violin concertos. Beloved American violinist Hilary Hahn plays Mozart’s Concerto No. 5, from 1775, which in addition to its energy and elegance is notable for its unusual finale, which features the surprising “Turkish” episode that gives the concerto its nickname.
The BSO under Serge Koussevitzky gave the American premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in 1945. Written in 1944, the symphony looks beyond the turmoil of World War II to celebrate the nobility of the human spirit.
Featuring
Program Notes & Works
Short Stories from the Vienna Woods
Written in his eclectic and vibrant style, HK Gruber's suite from his opera Tales from the Vienna Woods is rich with allusions to popular music and jazz and reflects the humor and humanity of Ödön von Horváth’s portrait of middle-class life in early 1930s Vienna.
Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, K.219
Only 19 when he wrote the last of his violin concertos, Mozart proved he was not only the master of the concerto but the master of the violin. He fully realized in these pieces not only the dramatic possibilities in the dialogue between soloist and orchestra but the real elegance and power of the vi...
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat, Opus 100
From the symphony’s first page with its tart octaves of flute and bassoon, to the coda of the finale, with that daring scoring for solo strings, piano, harp, and percussion, all of this is most brilliantly worked out for the orchestra.
