Spotlight on Nathan Cole and Steven Ansell
BSO Concertmaster Nathan Cole, in his concerto debut with the orchestra, and Principal Viola Steven Ansell are soloists in Wolfgang Amadè Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in February 2026. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation with CRB radio host and producer Brian McCreath about their collaboration.
You are the two soloists for Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante. I’m so curious about this piece because it’s one of the pinnacles of Mozart’s music, at least in the public mind. It just feels like something everybody loves. But we don’t want to take it for granted as just something you can toss off when you show up at Symphony Hall for the concerts that week. So let me ask you first about the process of how you approach this as a duo. Is it a piece that rewards discussion and close rehearsal? Or is there a sense that Mozart wrote it so well that it kind of falls into place by itself?
Steven Ansell: Wing it! [laughter] That’s a very good question. As with any Mozart piece, it seems quite simple. There are not so many notes, the harmonies are mostly kind of standard. But funny enough, Mozart is such great music that you really have to work on it. And there are a lot of things in the violin part, in the viola part—we have freedom, but we’re playing the same music. So we probably have to talk a lot about articulations and where we’re going to put slurs and just character in general and how we’d like it to go.
Nathan, tell me about your perspective on it and especially as the concertmaster who’s relatively recently arrived, you’ve now been working with Steven for a while. Does your work in the orchestra and your chemistry there help inform how you’re going to approach this piece?
Nathan Cole: For sure, and I’m grateful also for our time so far playing together in the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, because that’s really the most like what we’ll be doing as the two soloists. It’s a funny thing to have a double concerto where two solo lines, two concerto soloists, have to fit together as chamber music. I recently re-watched one of my favorite video recordings of this piece, by people that had undoubtedly played together a lot, and in the very first phrase there were a whole bunch of details that were just not done the same way, not together. I had never noticed that before but now what I’m thinking Steve and I are going to have to talk about this, that, and the other.
Ansell: We’ll see. A lot of times it’s best not to talk about it. Because after all, music is a song without words, and I think Nathan and I will communicate very easily and well without saying that much.
Even with two very similar instruments you’re still searching for a common blend of sound, and you’re looking for a color. Tell me more about how you calibrate your ears and what that does to the way you play.
Cole: Our first entrance, we are playing in octaves, and in those cases, it works better for me to fit into Steve’s sound generally than the other way around. Because I mean, the viola’s going to make more sound.
Ansell: When I’m playing it, I’d love to provide a great base for the violin sound, but the fact is that in his register, he’s still going to be more brilliant than the viola. What I try to do is blend into his sound. So he’s trying to blend into my sound, I’m trying to blend into his sound.
Nathan, tell me about what this piece does, how it’s built, what you have to do in comparison to the five violin concertos for solo violin that Mozart wrote.
Cole: Well, the biggest difference is that I have another soloist to either—as we were talking about—blend with, or sort of push against, which is really fun. And I want to say, too, the best collaborations, I think, happen when two people come into a piece with really strong ideas. Do we discuss this and that before we play? If you try to approach music like this that way, you can box yourself in before you even get started. I think it’s always better to bring two strong viewpoints together. Hopefully they’re not completely dissimilar, but then that gives a basis for discussion and playing around. You know, in this piece as opposed to the violin concertos, it’s more obvious to me the difference in registers. If I play a line and then Steve plays it, they naturally are going to have different characters. In the violin concertos, that same sort of thing happens, but I have to create it myself and become the different voices.
Is it technically in the same ballpark in terms of just getting around the instrument? Is it very similar in that way to the violin concertos?
Ansell: It is, although the key of E-flat is not as friendly as the keys of the three most popular Mozart violin concertos, G, D, and A. Those are all open strings. Speaking as a violinist, I will admit, it’s easy for us to creep sharp, sharp, sharp in a flat key like E-flat. So it’s good to be grounded.
Go back to your work together in the Chamber Players and why that’s important for a collaboration like this. What is the process of playing with your colleagues in chamber music in that setting in terms of developing the language, developing the communication that’s necessary to play any music together?
Ansell: Well, the more that you play different repertoire together—like a Brahms piano quartet and this piece by Carlos Simon [both January 2026] and we play all sorts of different repertoire and—
Cole: We played Mozart in the key of E-flat.
Ansell: Yes, in the key of E-flat, the string trio. So the more you play together the more you sort of rub shoulders and musically speaking and there’s a sense of communication that develops.
Cole: I think there’s the general understanding of what work style someone prefers. Is someone super fussy and they want everything tied up with a ribbon before? That’s not Steve, and I don’t think it’s me either. So it’s good to know that and to be comfortable with that going in. Then there are just the small details that players would notice, if we’re going to start something, this is what I’m used to looking at, this is what I’m used to hearing. And even extending to, okay, when the pressure’s on, what way does someone tend to lean? And then you’re ready for that. And it’s just, performance is more exciting. That means you don’t have to work everything out in advance because you can leave some things to the moment, knowing what tendencies someone may have.
Ansell: Right. Exactly. So it’s really good to be able to be a little bit spontaneous. And I also wanted to mention that aside from the great joy and excitement that Mozart brings to the first movement, even though there’s a little bit of tragedy in G minor in the development [plays excerpt], the slow movement he wrote just after his mother had passed away is just one of those genius movements that takes your breath away. And then the presto that follows, he’s, you know, “well, life has to go on and I’m going to enjoy it.” It’s just so joyous. So you have these big contrasts in feeling in the piece, and it’s fantastic. It’s just such a great, great piece.
Cole: The first time I ever played it was as a member of the orchestra. It was the New York String Orchestra Seminar, which Jamie Laredo had just taken over from Alexander Schneider. And he took the solo viola part with Cho-Liang Lin playing violin. And I couldn’t get enough of the piece. I loved his sound on viola. I thought, oh, I could never study with someone like that. And then I got to, years later. So, yeah, deep personal connection to the piece, too, for sure.
Nathan, you’ve been with the orchestra for just a couple of years now. And we have heard you as a soloist. In fact, we talked last fall about some orchestral solos that you just brilliantly pulled off in the fall. But this is your first time stepping in front of the orchestra as a concerto soloist. I just want to hear from you what it’s like to step in front of your colleagues that way and be in this role as a concerto soloist.
Cole: Well, it’s always a very humanizing moment. You appreciate always the support of your colleagues, and I do always feel that everyone is pulling for you extra.
Ansell: Definitely—one of our own!