This concert features the world premiere performance of John Williams’ Violin Concerto No.2 from the Tanglewood Festival 2021. Williams himself conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the soloist is the work’s dedicatee, Anne-Sophie Mutter. The legendary composer and superstar violinist are old friends and have enjoyed worldwide success together in recent years. Providing an explosive opening to the concert is American composer-violinist Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst (2012) for string orchestra, full of fiery colors and energy and conducted by the BSO’s Music Director Andris Nelsons. He returns to the stage after the Violin Concerto for Copland’s Quiet City, a score that began life as incidental music for a play of the same name but found fame as a standalone concert piece.

With haunting solo parts for trumpet and English horn, this reflective work paints an atmospheric portrait of a city by night. The program ends with the suite Stravinsky put together in 1919 from his ballet The Firebird, which triumphantly premiered in Paris in 1910.

Jessy Montgomery
Starburst

John Williams
Violin Concerto No. 2

John Williams
Across the Stars

Aaron Copland
Quiet City

Igor Stravinsky
Suite from "The Firebird" (1919 version)

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons / John Williams, conductors
Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin