Double Concerto Suite for violin, cello, and orchestra
Carlos Simon was born April 13, 1986, in Washington, DC, grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently based in Washington. He composed his Double Concerto Suite on a joint commission from the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, DC, Gianandrea Noseda, Music Director; the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, Music Director; and l’Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege.
The score of the Double Concerto calls for solo violin and cello plus an orchestra of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, wind chimes, bell tree, large triangle, cymbals, suspended cymbal, tam-tam, large whip, tambourine, snare drum, tom-toms, bass drum), harp, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
The Double Concerto Suite—more on its unusual title below—is the latest of several Boston Symphony-commissioned or co-commissioned works from the BSO’s first-ever Composer Chair, Carlos Simon. Simon began his tenure in the role (formally, the Deborah and Philip Edmundson Composer Chair) in September 2023. His BSO orchestral commissions have also included Four Black American Dances, which the orchestra premiered in Symphony Hall under Andris Nelsons’ direction and also took on its 2023 European tour, and his Festive Overture and Fanfare, composed to mark Nelsons’ tenth anniversary as BSO Music Director. The BSO also co-commissioned his Good News Mass, performed here in January 2026.
Simon’s other activities in his role as Composer Chair showcase the broad range of his musicianship. The Boston Pops and Keith Lockhart premiered his Song of Massachusetts for a live audience of thousands during the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular at the Hatch Shell on the Charles River this past July 4. The BSO also commissioned his a cappella choral work Words and Prayers of My Fathers for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which premiered it at Tanglewood in 2025; the Gardner Suite for the Boston Symphony Chamber Players; and a brief work for violin and piano, Serenade, for Augustin Hadelich during the violinist’s stint as the BSO’s Artist in Residence for the 2025-2026 season. He has curated chamber music concerts (in which he also played piano) and a centennial orchestral celebration of John Coltrane’s music. In spring 2027, Boston Lyric Opera will produce Simon’s new BLO/BSO co-commissioned “community opera,” created in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, derived from stories and experiences of the people of Boston.
Simon is also composer-in-residence at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center until 2027, though that role has shifted with the Center’s closure and is primarily focused on his work with the National Symphony Orchestra. His residency had previously included collaborations with Washington National Opera. Several of his orchestral works were recorded by Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gianandrea Noseda for an album released in 2024. In 2020, he joined the faculty of Georgetown University, where he is now an associate professor of music. Simon wrote Requiem for the Enslaved for Georgetown University, which commissioned it as part of its reckoning with its history of engaging in slaveholding and the slave trade. Simon has also been commissioned by New York’s Metropolitan Opera for a new work, The Highlands, slated to be produced by the company in 2027.
Carlos Simon typically composes music rich with personal, historical, and musical associations. His Good News Mass, one of his most ambitious projects to date and one of his most personal, balances wonderfully the gospel music at the heart of his musical language with a robustly symphonic sense of form and overall scope. Four Black American Dances shows great imagination in its reinvention of historical dance music styles for the present day and for the medium of the symphony orchestra. The chamber-ensemble Gardner Suite uses tropes from music history to allude to artworks from different periods in Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, quoting from Gregorian chant and borrowing stylistically from traditional Spanish dance music and the Baroque concerto grosso form.
Already a composer with few stylistic limitations, Simon continues to find inspiration in older traditions. About his new Double Concerto Suite, he writes,
This double concerto for violin and cello has no associated programmatic concept. For the first time in my compositional career, I have decided to write a piece that allows listeners to assign their own meaning and understanding of the work. It is truly absolute music—that is music for music’s sake. The composition is, however, inspired by a wide range of genres from Baroque dance forms like the passacaglia and the gavotte to Delta Blues. My hope with this work is to allow the soloists to express themselves through a variety of orchestral colors and musical styles.
Simon’s concerto was conceived for violinist Hilary Hahn and cellist Seth Parker Woods; Simon has written solo works for both, and their personalities and playing styles inspired the composer’s approach to the concerto. The composer’s “absolute music” idea and references to the Baroque are a nod to two of the great masterworks for solo instruments, J.S. Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas and the suites for solo cello. Both Hahn and Woods are noted for their performances of the Bach solo works.
The title “Double Concerto Suite” references those Baroque precedents—Bach’s cello suites are each a sequence of archetypal dances, and “partita” is essentially synonymous with “suite.” The five-movement concerto draws on orchestral textures and large-scale forms of the era. The way themes are shaped, repeated and developed, and shared between orchestra and soloists shows Simon’s respect for his models. The composer’s distinct personality emerges, bringing the piece into the present, through the colors of the orchestration, particularly in percussion-dominated passages and patterns.
The “Sprightly” first movement recalls the fast movements of Baroque concertos by Vivaldi or Bach, with insertions of syncopation and irregular rhythms to add excitement to the otherwise Baroque flow of the pulse. The second movement, marked initially “Slowly and heavy,” begins with a solo cello passage, a short melodic phrase followed by a chain of falling double-stops (two notes played at once), which becomes a recurring motif. A solo flute joins in counterpoint. A second section, marked “Ethereally,” contrasts strongly with the first part.
The central third movement, “Moving with glow,” features highly patterned exchanges between the soloists and orchestra, the density often shifting as abruptly as differently colored tiles in a mosaic; there is also a substantial passage for orchestra without the soloists. A “walking bass” lends the second part of the movement a stately forward motion.
The Delta Blues style mentioned by Simon above colors the fourth movement, in which the soloists are notably at the forefront. A slight focus on the solo violin mirrors the slight highlighting of the cello in the second movement. A flurry at the end of the fourth movement returns to a quasi-Baroque character and anticipates and leads without a break to the quick finale, “With haste.” Simon builds the movement from an orchestral fabric of hocketing (small interlocking musical figures shared between instruments or orchestral groups), which creates exuberant intensity. The soloists enter unaccompanied with the same interlocking texture, requiring strict and intuitive cooperation between the players. After an extended orchestral passage, the two soloists share a duo cadenza. The orchestra returns for a powerful, high-energy coda.
Robert Kirzinger
Composer and writer Robert Kirzinger is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Director of Program Publications.