Boston Symphony Orchestra / Jean-Yves Thibaudet / Andris Nelsons
Simon: Four Black American Dances / Stravinsky: Petrushka / Gershwin: Piano Concerto / Ravel: La valse
Timeless classics
Dance and rhythm: those are the common denominators in the joint programme presented by Andris Nelsons, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Perfect for a spirited conductor like Nelsons, who is currently both the music director of the top American orchestra from Boston and the Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
Folk influences pervade the start of Carlos Simon’s »Four Black American Dances« – the only work by a contemporary composer on the programme. The other works are all timeless classics from the early 20th century, among them Stravinsky’s ballet »Petrushka«, which tells the bizarre yet heart-rending story of a fairground puppet, and George Gershwin’s dizzyingly virtuosic Piano Concerto of 1925: a jazz-inspired excursion back to the Roaring Twenties.
And the concert closes with Maurice Ravel’s »La valse«, a »poème choréographique« that eerily evokes the waltzing world of yesterday, which is destroyed in the catastrophe of the First World War.
Performers
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Jean-Yves Thibaudet piano
conductor Andris Nelsons
Programme
Carlos Simon
Four Black American Dances
Igor Strawinsky
Petrushka / Burlesque in four tableaux (version from 1947)
– Interval –
George Gershwin
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in F major
Maurice Ravel
La valse / Poème chorégraphique for Orchestra
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