“Andris Nelsons and the BR-Symphonieorchester are a sensation”, raved the press. It isn’t often that a young conductor excites audiences and stirs up critics to the extent that Andris Nelsons does. The young Latvian is heralded as a “highly emotional, passionate, electrifying” (Abendzeitung) conductor. And, as can be seen in this concert “From the New World”, he communicates his passion with a vocabulary of gestures that sweep the audience off their feet.

With the concert “From the New World”, the young Latvian conductor, Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, rounds off a truly landmark year: he has appeared at Covent Garden, the Met, Bayreuth, the Wiener Staatsoper and the BBC Proms. And he also made his debuts with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Wiener Philharmoniker, with whom he undertook a Japan tour.

This concert with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the orchestra of his
fellow countryman Mariss Jansons, is devoted to the “New World”. The main work of the evening is a piece written in America in the 19th century by a famous Bohemian composer: Antonín Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World”. Here, Nelsons and the BR musicians “uncover an exciting thriller that reaches a boiling point in the Scherzo and Finale” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Even with his often lightning-fast tempi, Nelsons takes the time to phrase and model every motif, every melody, every voice within the piece. “One rarely experiences such a natural connection between conductor and orchestra”, wrote the Stuttgarter Zeitung. The first half features compositions of the 20th and 21st-century by American composers Charles Ives and John Adams, along with a work by Igor Stravinsky, who spent several decades in the U.S.

***

PROGRAM
Charles Ives
The Unanswered Question
John Adams
Slonimsky‘s Earbox
Igor Strawinsky
Le chant du rossignol
Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 9 E minor, Op. 95 “From the New World”