
2022-23 Season Programs
An unforgettable season awaits. From beloved classics performed by returning guest artists to world premieres and exciting BSO debuts, the 2022-23 season celebrates the breadth of everything classical music has to offer.
Experience it for yourself! Become a subscriber starting April 19, or get your tickets when they go on sale to the public on August 8 at 10am.
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Andris Nelsons conducts Bach, Holst, Montgomery, and Williams with Lorelei Ensemble and Awadagin Pratt, piano
Andris Nelsons opens the new BSO season with A Toast!, which John Williams originally wrote in 2014 to welcome Nelsons to the BSO. American pianist Awadagin Pratt, making his BSO debut, performs a work written for him, American composer Jessie Montgomery’s Rounds, and J.S. Bach’s Concerto in A. English composer Gustav Holst’s orchestral showpiece The Planets ranges from Venus’ sweet lyricism to Mars’ propulsive energy.
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Symphony Gala
The Symphony Gala, a stand-alone fundraising event to benefit the BSO, will be set inside majestic Symphony Hall. The evening will featuring dynamic pianist Lang Lang performing works including Saint-Saën’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Andris Nelsons and the BSO. For more information, contact Katie Gassert at kgassert@bso.org.
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Andris Nelsons conducts Habibi, Haydn, and Shostakovich with Thomas Rolfs, trumpet and Yuja Wang, piano
Dynamic Chinese pianist Yuja Wang plays not one but both of Dmitri Shostakovich’s piano concertos, written 24 years apart, part of the BSO and Andris Nelsons’ multi-season exploration of the composer’s major works with orchestra. A BSO-commissioned work by the young Iranian Canadian composer Iman Habibi opens the program. The concert closes with Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 100, whose nickname comes from the surprising appearance of percussion in the slow movement.
See DetailsThu Sep 29, 2022 - 7:30pm
Fri Sep 30, 2022 - 1:30pm
Sat Oct 1, 2022 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Andris Nelsons conducts Bernstein, Ogonek, and Shostakovich with Janine Jansen, violin and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus with James Burton, conductor
Andris Nelsons leads two works new to the BSO repertoire: a BSO-commissioned piece by American composer Elizabeth Ogonek, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1930 Symphony No. 3 for chorus and orchestra, part of Nelsons’ and the BSO’s multi-season survey of the composer’s complete symphonies. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus also joins the BSO for Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, sung in Hebrew, and Dutch violinist Janine Jansen is soloist in Bernstein’s Serenade.
See DetailsThu Oct 6, 2022 - 7:30pm
Fri Oct 7, 2022 - 1:30pm
Sat Oct 8, 2022 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts Bartók, Enescu, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky with Emanuel Ax, piano
Colombian conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada in his BSO debut is joined by American pianist Emanuel Ax for Wolfgang Mozart’s high-spirited Piano Concerto No. 18. The familiar, yearning Romeo and Juliet Overture is one of several works Pyotr Tchaikovsky based on Shakespeare plays. Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s lurid Miraculous Mandarin Suite and the Romanian French composer George Enescu's folk music inspired Romanian Rhapsody both make exciting and colorful demands on the orchestra.
See DetailsThu Oct 13, 2022 - 7:30pm
Fri Oct 14, 2022 - 8:00pm
Sat Oct 15, 2022 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Andris Nelsons conducts Mahler's Symphony No. 6
Gustav Mahler’s intensely emotional Symphony No. 6, written in 1903–04, is arguably his most heartfelt symphonic statement — his wife Alma called it "the most completely personal of his works." The Sixth features three powerful and ominous hammer blows in its finale, which evidently represented for Mahler "three blows of fate."
See DetailsThu Oct 20, 2022 - 7:30pm
Fri Oct 21, 2022 - 1:30pm
Sat Oct 22, 2022 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Boston Symphony Chamber Players
Join us for more intimate performances with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players’ (BSCP) on Sunday afternoons at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. Founded in 1964, the BSCP combines the talents of BSO principal players and renowned guest artists to explore the full spectrum of chamber music repertoire.
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Andris Nelsons conducts Beethoven and Shostakovich with Mitsuko Uchida, piano
Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida joins Andris Nelsons and the BSO for the first concert of a multi-year collaboration in Ludwig van Beethoven’s five piano concertos, beginning with his monumental Emperor. Criticism in the Soviet press of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District put him in a precarious position with Soviet authorities. His response was the powerful and outwardly triumphant Fifth Symphony.
See DetailsThu Oct 27, 2022 - 7:30pm
Fri Oct 28, 2022 - 1:30pm
Sat Oct 29, 2022 - 8:00pm
Sun Oct 30, 2022 - 2:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Andris Nelsons conducts Mozart, Shaw, and Strauss
Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw wrote her Bach-inspired Punctum originally for string quartet; the BSO-commissioned orchestral version was premiered in summer 2022. The second of his final trilogy of symphonies, composed in 1788, Wolfgang Mozart’s riveting No. 40 in G minor is for many his most familiar symphony. Richard Strauss’ amazingly vivid Alpine Symphony depicts the picturesque ascent and (much faster!) descent of a Bavarian mountain.
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Family Concert: Peter and the Wolf
Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras (BYSO)
Adrian Slywotzsky, conductor
PROKOFIEV Peter and the Wolf -
Anna Rakitina conducts Langer, Mussorgsky, and Rachmaninoff with Inon Barnatan, piano
BSO Assistant Conductor Anna Rakitina leads pianist Inon Barnatan in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s last piano-and-orchestra work, featuring both astonishing virtuoso passages and Rachmaninoff’s best-known melody. The orchestral suite from composer Elena Langer’s witty and touching opera Figaro Gets a Divorce is by turns mysterious, songful, and jazzy. Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, orchestrated brilliantly by Maurice Ravel, is a magical response to marvelous paintings.
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Omer Meir Wellber conducts Beethoven, Milch-Sheriff, and Tchaikovsky with Midori, violin
Performing with the BSO at Symphony Hall for the first time since 2003, renowned violinist Midori joins Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber in his BSO debut for Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s beloved Violin Concerto. Israeli composer Ella Milch-Sheriff’s The Eternal Stranger for narrator and orchestra relates Ludwig van Beethoven’s difficulty in society due to his personality and deafness to the hostility and rejection experienced by refugees and other “strangers.” The funeral march from the Eroica Symphony and the overture from Beethoven’s opera about a political imprisonment remind us of the composer’s abiding universal humanity.
See DetailsThu Jan 5, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Jan 6, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Jan 7, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Alan Gilbert conducts Boulanger, Dello Joio, Dvořák, and Stenhammar with Garrick Ohlsson, piano
American conductor Alan Gilbert and frequent BSO guest Garrick Ohlsson premiere Justin Dello Joio’s piano concerto Oceans Apart, written for Ohlsson. Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar’s wide-ranging 1911 Serenade has a satisfyingly symphonic scope. French composer Lili Boulanger’s impressionistic 1918 depiction of a spring morning and Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s celebratory Carnival Overture, from 1891, complete the program.
See DetailsThu Jan 12, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Jan 13, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Jan 14, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Karina Canellakis conducts Dvořák, Lutosławski, and Szymanowski with Nicola Benedetti, violin
Making her BSO debut, violinist Nicola Benedetti joins conductor Karina Canellakis in her Symphony Hall debut for Karel Szymanowski’s scintillating Violin Concerto No. 2 from 1933, his last major work. His compatriot Witold Lutosławski’s folk-music influenced Concerto for Orchestra (1954) helped establish his international reputation. Antonín Dvořák’s nature-inspired tone poem Wood Dove has not been played by the BSO since 1905.
See DetailsThu Jan 19, 2023 - 10:30am
Thu Jan 19, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Jan 20, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Jan 21, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Andris Nelsons conducts Brahms, Mackey, and Shostakovich with Baiba Skride, violin
Music Director Andris Nelsons leads the world premiere of a BSO-commissioned Concerto for Orchestra by Grammy-winning American composer/guitarist Steven Mackey, whose vibrant music embraces a range of influences, from Ludwig van Beethoven to modern rock. Latvian violinist Baiba Skride returns to Symphony Hall for Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2, written for the great Ukrainian violinist David Oistrakh in 1967. Johannes Brahms’ profound and majestic Fourth Symphony closes the program.
See DetailsThu Jan 26, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Jan 27, 2023 - 8:00pm
Sat Jan 28, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Andris Nelsons conducts an All-Wagner Program
Andris Nelsons and the BSO’s continuing tradition of performing opera in concert brings us excerpts from Richard Wagner’s early opera Tannhäuser, which had its premiere in Dresden in 1845. A German minstrel-knight, Tannhäuser (tenor Klaus Florian Vogt), struggles to reject the world’s sensual pleasures, represented by the "Venusburg Music" of the opera’s Act I. He is redeemed by the pure love of Elisabeth, sung by Amber Wagner, and with the help of the wise minstrel Wolfram, sung by Christian Gerhaher.
Sung in German with English supertitles
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Andris Nelsons conducts Beethoven, Bloch, and Simon with Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello
Exciting young English cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason makes his BSO debut in Ernest Bloch’s 1916 Schelomo ("King Solomon"), in which the expansively melodic cello role represents the voice of the king. Opening the concert is the premiere of a BSO-commissioned work by the talented Washington, D.C.-based composer Carlos Simon. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 builds in excitement from its atmospheric introduction through its thrilling finale.
See DetailsThu Feb 9, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Feb 10, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Feb 11, 2023 - 8:00pm
Sun Feb 12, 2023 - 2:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Lahav Shani conducts Khachaturian, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninoff with Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano
Israeli conductor Lahav Shani, making his Symphony Hall debut, and elegant French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet perform 20th-century Soviet Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian’s soulful and dazzling 1936 Piano Concerto, not heard in a Symphony Hall BSO concert since 1971. Sergei Prokofiev’s delightful First Symphony was conceived as a 20th-century successor to works by Wolfgang Mozart and Joseph Haydn. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s ingeniously constructed, brilliantly colorful Symphonic Dances was his last finished work.
See DetailsThu Feb 16, 2023 - 10:30am
Thu Feb 16, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Feb 17, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Feb 18, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Boston Symphony Chamber Players
Join us for more intimate performances with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players’ (BSCP) on Sunday afternoons at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. Founded in 1964, the BSCP combines the talents of BSO principal players and renowned guest artists to explore the full spectrum of chamber music repertoire.
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André Raphel conducts Coleridge-Taylor, Still, and Caine with the Uri Caine Trio, Barbara Walker, vocalist, and Catto Chorus
American conductor André Raphel leads this first program in a series exploring complex social issues. The centerpiece of these concerts is Philadelphia jazz pianist and composer Uri Caine’s gospel and popular music-based The Passion of Octavius Catto, which tells of the 19th-century civil rights leader’s fight for justice. English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s charming potpourri Petite Suite de Concert dates from about 1911. In four movements, “Longing,” “Sorrow,” “Humor,” and “Aspiration,” William Grant Still’s 1930 Afro-American Symphony, his best-known work, is a bluestinged panorama of the composer’s heritage.
See DetailsFri Mar 3, 2023 - 8:00pm
Sat Mar 4, 2023 - 8:00pm
Sun Mar 5, 2023 - 2:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Thomas Wilkins conducts Bonds, Davis, and Dawson with Anthony McGill, clarinet
In the second program of a series of concerts exploring complex social issues, conductor Thomas Wilkins leads clarinetist Anthony McGill in Anthony Davis’ concerto You Have the Right to Remain Silent, a musical response to a tense encounter with law enforcement in a case of mistaken identity. Margaret Bonds’ spiritual-based Montgomery Variations is a 1963 tribute to Montgomery, Alabama, and to Martin Luther King. William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was a huge success upon its premiere at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1934 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski. The symphony’s themes are taken from the melodies of spirituals.
See DetailsThu Mar 9, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Mar 10, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Mar 11, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Giancarlo Guerrero conducts Górecki and Wolfe with Aleksandra Kurzak, soprano and Lorelei Ensemble
In this third concert in a series exploring complex social issues, frequent guest Giancarlo Guerrero leads American composer Julia Wolfe’s BSO co-commissioned Her Story, featuring the Lorelei Ensemble women’s vocal group. Originally commissioned to commemorate the centenary of women’s right to vote in the U.S., the piece broadly speaks of the continuing struggle for women’s rights. The three movements of Polish composer Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs movingly contemplates the anguish of the separation of a mother from her child.
Both works performed with English supertitles
See DetailsThu Mar 16, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Mar 17, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Mar 18, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Thomas Adès conducts Adès and Stravinsky with Danielle de Niese, narrator, Edgaras Montvidas, tenor and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, James Burton, conductor
English composer Thomas Adès returns to lead two works from The Dante Project, a three-part ballet score from 2021 based on Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century Italian epic poem Commedia. The piece was written to mark the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death. Igor Stravinsky’s mythology-based Perséphone for narrator, tenor, chorus, and orchestra is a magically surreal neoclassical retelling of the goddess Persephone’s abduction by Hades, god of the underworld.
Sung in French with English supertitles
See DetailsThu Mar 23, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Mar 24, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Mar 25, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Family Concert: Young at Heart: Engaging the Power of Our Creative Spirit
From Beethoven to Carlos Simon, this family-friendly program explores the journeys of major composers who wrote groundbreaking works while they were young, and how today’s young composers are having the same significant impact.
*The 10am concert is a sensory-friendly performance
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Earl Lee conducts Chin, Mozart, and Schumann with Eric Lu, piano
BSO Assistant Conductor Earl Lee, making his full-program Symphony Hall debut, is joined by acclaimed young Chinese American pianist Eric Lu for Wolfgang Mozart’s passionate, stormy D minor piano concerto. The title of South Korean-born composer Unsuk Chin’s brief, exciting concert opener translates as "suddenly, with power." Composed during one of his periods of chronic depression, Robert Schumann’s Second Symphony is nevertheless wonderfully affirmative and optimistic in character.
See DetailsThu Apr 6, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Apr 7, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Apr 8, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Andris Nelsons conducts Escaich, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel with Gautier Capuçon, cello
Music Director Andris Nelsons leads the American premiere of a new work for cello and orchestra by French organist-composer Thierry Escaich, written for soloist Gautier Capuçon. Maurice Ravel’s exuberantly orchestrated Alborada del gracioso is tinged with Flamenco rhythms and Spanish flavors. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s by turns lush and exuberant Symphony No. 2 closes the program.
See DetailsThu Apr 13, 2023 - 10:30am
Thu Apr 13, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Apr 14, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Apr 15, 2023 - 8:00pm
Thu May 19, 2022 - 11:00am
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras (BYSO)
Bring the whole family to Symphony Hall for this fun and engaging concert series, designed to encourage an appreciation for live performance and orchestral music.
Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras (BYSO)
Marta Żurad, conductor
Matt Roberts, magician -
Boston Symphony Chamber Players
Join us for more intimate performances with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players’ (BSCP) on Sunday afternoons at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. Founded in 1964, the BSCP combines the talents of BSO principal players and renowned guest artists to explore the full spectrum of chamber music repertoire.
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Andris Nelsons conducts Adés and Sibelius with Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin and Golda Schultz, soprano
Andris Nelsons leads superstar violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the American premiere of English composer Thomas Adès’ new Sibelius-inspired Air for violin and orchestra, a BSO co-commission written for Mutter. In her BSO debut, the young South African soprano Golda Schultz sings Jean Sibelius’ early Luonnotar, a dramatic tone poem with voice based on Finnish creation myth. Though his Fifth Symphony was an enormous success at its 1915 premiere, Sibelius extensively revised the original four-movement work, completing the final three-movement version in 1919.
See DetailsThu Apr 20, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri Apr 21, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat Apr 22, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
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Andris Nelsons conducts Ravel, Shaw, and Stravinsky with Seong-Jin Cho, piano
Acclaimed South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho returns to Symphony Hall for Maurice Ravel’s Concerto in G, one of the composer’s final works, which ranges from jazzy energy to poignant lyricism. Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Caroline Shaw’s Punctum, is a meditation on a moment from J.S. Bach. Igor Stravinsky’s 1911 ballet Petrushka, the second of his great trilogy for the Ballets Russes company, depicts the hapless living puppet title character in gloriously scored scenes from a carnival fair.
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Falling Out of Time
This special concert presents Argentina-born American composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time, composed for a multicultural, multistylistic instrumental ensemble. Drawing powerfully on popular and folk music styles, based on David Grossman’s experimental novel about parents’ grief at the loss of a child, Golijov’s urgently impactful piece is here presented in a semi-staged performance.
Semi-staged production, presented in association with Celebrity Series of Boston.
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Andris Nelsons conducts Britten and Shostakovich with Ildar Abdrazakov, bass, Augustin Hadelich, violin and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus with James Burton, conductor
The BSO and Andris Nelsons complete their multi-season survey of Dmitri Shostakovich’s symphonies with No. 13, Babi Yar, based on poems by Yevgeny Yevteshenko. Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov makes his BSO debut in these performances. The title poem condemns Soviet revisionist history and antisemitism surrounding a Nazi massacre of Ukrainian Jews. Opening the program, frequent BSO guest Augustin Hadelich plays Benjamin Britten’s early, lyrical Violin Concerto, the composer’s reaction to the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War.
See DetailsThu May 4, 2023 - 7:30pm
Fri May 5, 2023 - 1:30pm
Sat May 6, 2023 - 8:00pm
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA