Boston, Sept. 26, 2016, — Music Director Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra kicked off the 2016-17 season Saturday night at 6 PM with an all-Russian Opening Night program featuring highly-acclaimed Chinese pianist Lang Lang in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3.
Andris Nelsons conducts BSO at the opening night (photographer Michael Blanchard).
The BSO and Mr. Nelsons began the program with Shostakovich’s Festive Overture and closed it with Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, a piece Ravel himself introduced to Serge Koussevitzky (BSO music director, 1924-49), and which inspired Koussevitzky’s commission of the arrangement.
Andris Nelsons leads the BSO in fourteen weeks of wide-ranging programming during the orchestra’s 2016-17 season, September 24-May 6, highlighted by concert performances of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, featuring a dream cast including Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Erin Morley, and Franz Hawlata (9/29 & 10/1); world premieres of works by Eric Nathan and Timo Andres paired with the music of Brahms (11/8-19); the continuation of programming and recording initiatives around the music of Shostakovich; monumental works for orchestra and chorus, including Bach’s Mass in B minor (2/2-7), Brahms’s A German Requiem (10/6-8), and Mozart’s Requiem (4/20-22); and performances of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (2/9-14), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, Eroica, (2/16-21), Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 (4/13-15), and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 (5/4-6).
A reception was held after the concert. Music Director Nelsons and pianist Lang Lang greeted about 60 guests who join the reception. They were congratulated by the guests for a successful opening night performance. The Open Night Gala event raised $1.5 million. Lang Lang graciously signed his autograph for bostonese.com readers. Please check out more pictures from the reception below.
