Shostakovich: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 Baiba Skride, Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons

• Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975): Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 99 (Formerly Op. 77):
• 1 Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 99 (Formerly Op. 77): I. Nocturne. Moderato 14:46
• 2 Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 99 (Formerly Op. 77): II. Scherzo. Allegro 06:58
• 3 Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 99 (Formerly Op. 77): III. Passacaglia. Andante 16:03
• 4 Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 99 (Formerly Op. 77): IV. Burlesque. Allegro con brio – Presto 05:18
• Violin Concerto No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 129:
• 5 Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 129: I. Moderato 15:53
• 6 Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 129: II. Adagio 12:15
• 7 Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 129: III. Adagio – Allegro 09:33
• Total Runtime 01:20:46

Info for Shostakovich: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2

The Boston Symphony Orchestra and its principal conductor Andris Nelsons announce their upcoming album, on which they perform Shostakovich's two violin concertos together with Latvian violinist Baiba Skride. The work will be released as part of an anthology to mark the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich's death and will include new recordings of his piano, violin and cello concertos alongside his previously published symphonies and incidental music. The iconic composer wrote his two violin concertos for his friend David Oistrakh, although he did not perform the sombre first concerto for years. On the album, Baiba Skride now makes both works her own, the pyrotechnics of the first as well as the strongly reduced, rather lyrical second concerto.

Baiba Skride, violin
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor

Baiba Skride
Baiba's natural approach to music-making has endeared her to many of today’s most prestigious conductors and orchestras worldwide. She performs regularly with orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouworkest, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and NHK Symphony Orchestra. She enjoys close collaborations with conductors such as Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Edward Gardner, Susanna Mälkki, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Dima Slobodeniouk, John Storgårds, Juraj Valčuha, and Kazuki Yamada.

Upcoming highlights include Skride’s return to the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Andris Nelsons appearing in concerts in Boston and on tour in Vienna, Prague, and Riga. She will perform both Shostakovich violin concertos as well as chamber music at the historically unique Shostakovich Festival in Leipzig in May 2025, in partnership with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In addition, she will appear as soloist on tour in Spain with Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi and Kristiina Poska as well as with Kammerakademie Potsdam and Joshua Weilerstein, among others. Recent highlights include her much-anticipated return to Berliner Philharmoniker, Philharmonia Orchestra, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Dresdner Philharmonie, and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. In North America she regularly appears with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Houston Symphony, Utah Symphony, and Baltimore Symphony.

This season, Deutsche Grammophon releases Baiba Skride’s recording of the Shostakovich violin concertos with Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons. In addition, her recording of Gubaidulina’s Triple Concerto with NDR Radiophilharmonie (Hannover) and Andrew Manze will also be released this season on the Orfeo label. In Spring 2024, her recording of Britten's violin and double concertos with ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien and Marin Alsop, received excellent reviews. BBC Music Magazine praised Skride for her 'subtlety of phrasing and range of tonal palette,' highlighting her stature as a Romantic player. Her extensive discography with Orfeo includes all Mozart concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Bartók with WDR Sinfonieorchester, and works by Bernstein, Korngold, and Rózsa with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

Baiba Skride is an internationally sought-after chamber musician and performs regularly at festivals and concert halls across the world, including the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Musikverein Wien, Wigmore Hall London, Louvre Paris, as well as touring in North America and Australia. Skride is an advocate of new music and some of today's most prominent composers, including Sofia Gubaidulina, Victoria Borisova-Ollas, Sebastian Currier, and Hans Abrahamsen, have written concerti for her.

Skride was born into a musical Latvian family in Riga and continued her studies from 1995 with Petru Munteanu at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre. She plays the 'Yfrah Neaman' Stradivarius kindly on loan by the Neaman family through Beare’s International Violin Society.

Andris Nelsons
is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. These two positions, in addition to his leadership of a pioneering alliance between both institutions, have firmly established Grammy Award-winning Nelsons as one of the most sought-after conductors in the world today.

Nelsons’ positions in Boston and Leipzig commenced in the 2014/15 season and February 2018, respectively. In Autumn 2019, Nelsons, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig came together for three joint performances at Boston’s Symphony Hall. This ground-breaking alliance has since led to co-commissions, musician exchanges, and educational collaborations. In May 2025, the partnership will celebrate a further milestone when the Boston Symphony Orchestra joins the Gewandhausorchester for the Shostakovich Festival Leipzig, a comprehensive and globally unique celebration of the composer’s music, marking the 50th anniversary of his death. Nelsons will conduct two performances of “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” and all major Shostakovich symphonies, including a joint performance of the “Leningrad” Symphony No. 7, featuring musicians from both orchestras. As part of the festival, Nelsons will also conduct the newly created Festival Orchestra made up of young musicians from the Mendelssohn-Akademie Leipzig and the Tanglewood Music Center, an educational institution which Nelsons has been leading as Head of Conducting since 2024.

Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig will begin their 2024/25 season with a European tour, returning, among others, to the Lucerne Festival, and culminating in the season opening at the Gewandhaus. A further tour in February and March 2025 will feature celebrated soloist duo Lucas & Arthur Jussen in concerts across Europe. Nelsons will conduct contemporary works by Gewandhauskomponist Thomas Adès, as well as new commissions by the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s inaugural composer chair, Carlos Simon. The season in Boston, which marks Nelsons’ 10th anniversary as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, will include a complete Beethoven symphony cycle, a residency at Carnegie Hall in New York, and a European tour to Riga, Vienna, Prague and Leipzig with all-Shostakovich programmes. Nelsons will also resume his guest appearances, including a four-week Asia tour with the Wiener Philharmoniker, consisting of 22 concerts in 10 cities across South Korea, China, and Japan. The tour will also feature several world-renowned soloists – including frequent collaborator Seong-Jin Cho. Andris Nelsons will further mark his return to the Berliner Philharmoniker in December with performances of Bruckner’s eighth symphony.

Andris Nelsons is an exclusive recording artist with Deutsche Grammophon, a partnership which has resulted in various landmark projects with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Wiener Philharmoniker. Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra partner on recordings of the complete Shostakovich symphonies and the opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” – a cycle which has garnered four GRAMMY awards in the categories Best Orchestral Performance and Best Engineered Album. Furthermore, Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig recently concluded a critically acclaimed Bruckner symphonic cycle in celebration of the composer’s 200th birthday. Nelsons’ recordings of Beethoven’s complete symphonies with the Wiener Philharmoniker were released in October 2019. As part of the alliance between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Deutsche Grammophon produced a celebrated 2022 release of Richard Strauss’ major symphonic works performed by both orchestras.

This album contains no booklet.