BSO’s 24-25 season is full of Nelsons’s favorite things
Bountiful Beethoven, Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand,’ and more Shostakovich are on menu
In the upcoming 2024-25 season, Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons will celebrate his 10th anniversary at work with a few of his favorite things.
In the fall, there’s Mahler: the evening-length Symphony No. 8, also known as “Symphony of a Thousand.” There’s a four-week run through all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies in January. There are several programs focused on Shostakovich in spring. And there’s opera in concert — specifically, the first ever BSO performance of Erich Korngold’s “Die tote Stadt.”
“My first ten seasons as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra have been among the most joyous of my musical career,” Nelsons said in a statement provided by the orchestra that accompanied the Thursday release of the 2024-25 season and schedule. “We are excited to present and discover a range of new works alongside repertoire deeply beloved by the orchestra.”
The performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (Oct. 4-6) will feature the Tanglewood Festival Chorus; the boys of the St. Paul’s Choir School; and a who’s who of vocal soloists, including sopranos Latonia Moore, Christine Goerke, and Ying Fang, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green. Goerke returns in January for “Die tote Stadt” in the leading role of Marietta, opposite tenor Brandon Jovanovich as Paul.
Nelsons’s spring block of Shostakovich-focused concerts (April 10-May 3) dovetails into the first-ever Shostakovich Festival Leipzig (May 15-June 1), a project born of the alliance between the two orchestras Nelsons leads: the BSO and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. Much of the repertoire the BSO and Nelsons will play in Leipzig will be performed in Boston in the weeks leading up to the festival, including Symphonies Nos. 6, 8, 11, and 15, the Violin Concerto No. 1 with Baiba Skride, and the Cello Concerto No. 1, which features Yo-Yo Ma in a non-subscription performance April 11. This block also includes the world premiere of a new work for chorus and orchestra by Aleksandra Vrebalov, which will be paired with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 and Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” (April 26 & 27).
The 2024-25 season is the first with American composer Carlos Simon as the BSO’s composer chair, a newly created position in which Simon will curate programs and work with several branches of the organization. A new commission from Simon is slated to begin the BSO’s opening night fundraising gala on Sept. 19, and his “Wake Up: A Concerto for Orchestra” features on the BSO’s first subscription program of the season the following week alongside a world premiere from Tania León. In addition, Simon curated an allAmerican program for the Boston Symphony Chamber Players to be held in a special venue to be announced; and a program for the BSO celebrating the legacy of John Coltrane, to be performed with conductor Edwin Outwatercin March.
Drawing from the BSO family, assistant conductor Samy Rachid makes his subscription debut in a program featuring organist Olivier Latry in Michael Gandolfi’s “Ascending Light” and Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 (Oct. 10-12). Artistic adviser/ youth and family concerts conductor Thomas Wilkins leads the BSO in an all-Duke Ellington program with pianist Gerald Clayton and vocalist Renese King (Nov. 7-9).
Returning guest conductors on the 2024-25 lineup include Dima Slobodeniouk, Antonio Pappano, Herbert Blomstedt, Alan Gilbert, and Xian Zhang, while Teddy Abrams, Eun Sun Kim, and Nathalie Stutzmann make their BSO debuts. Tanglewood Music Center conducting fellows Ross Jamie Collins and Na’Zir McFadden also share a program with Nelsons.
Notably, violinist Ray Chen is the only instrumental soloist making a BSO debut during the season. Familiar faces are much more numerous, including violinists Isabelle Faust and Frank Peter Zimmermann; pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Jonathan Biss, Jan Lisiecki, Inon Barnatan, and Mitsuko Uchida; and cellist Alban Gerhardt. Soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry also join the BSO and Nelsons for Kevin Puts’s “The Brightness of Light,” a BSO commission inspired by the lives of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, which premiered at Tanglewood in 2019.
The Boston Pops will present a few special concerts while the BSO has run of the hall. In early September, conductor Keith Lockhart will lead two programs honoring conductor laureate John Williams, including a live performance of Williams’s score for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” along with a screening of the film. The Pops also take over the stage a weekend of seasonal programming around Halloween, with another film concert (this time “The Nightmare Before Christmas”) and a program celebrating El Día de Muertos.
This season also features the return of Concert for the City, a free event featuring performances by the BSO and Pops as well as community partners from around the Boston area. Specific details are yet to be announced, but the May 2023 Concert for the City included pre-concert performances by dance troupe DEAFinitely and the Berklee Chinese Traditional Music Club, an “instrument playground,” and the BSO debut of Boston mayor Michelle Wu, who played a movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 with the orchestra.
Subscriptions are now available at bso.org. Single tickets go on sale in July.