Anna Rakitina conducts Tchaikovsky, Ellen Reid and Sibelius featuring pianist Alexandre Kantorow
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
Having made her Symphony Hall debut in the BSO’s streamed concerts of 2020–21, Assistant Conductor Anna Rakitina conducts her first live-audience Symphony Hall program featuring the BSO debut of French pianist Alexandre Kantorow. The grand prix winner in the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition performs Tchaikovsky’s rarely heard Piano Concerto No. 2, an attractive work long overshadowed by the composer’s immensely popular Concerto No. 1. Tennessee-born composer Ellen Reid won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera p r i s m. Her 2019 orchestral score When the World as You’ve Known it Doesn’t Exist revels in energy and pure orchestral sound; the instrumental ensemble is enhanced by the earthy sounds of three soprano voices. Sibelius’ one-movement Symphony No. 7, one of his last completed works, was an entirely personal reinvention of the genre that had occupied him for almost forty years and which was closely tied to the landscape and culture of Finland.
Program Notes & Works
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G, Opus 44
Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s rarely performed Piano Concerto No. 2, written for his friend Nikolai Rubinstein, who died before he could play it, is unusual in featuring solo violin and cello along with the piano in the second movement.
When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist
Tennessee-born sound artist and composer Ellen Reid's sonically inventive orchestra work When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic as part of their Project 19 series and was premiered in February 2020.
Symphony No. 7
Jean Sibelius turned to Finnish legend for inspiration for his symphonic poems and infused his seven symphonies with a similar sense of narrative and atmosphere. In the Seventh Symphony, contrasting episodes blend seamlessly from one to the next in one 20-minute movement.
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