Concerto for Orchestra (2019)

For Orchestra

3333/4331/timp/4perc/hp/strings

Commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, Music Director

Duration: 19 minutes

Listen (Excerpts)

Performed live by Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Boston (MA), September 21, 2019
Posted with permission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra

View Online Score

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Program note

I think the first score I ever bought was Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and I remember first hearing it performed live by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, when I was a teenager. In graduate school, I studied with the late Steven Stucky, whose Second Concerto for Orchestra also became an important piece to me. Both of these works celebrate the instrument that is the orchestra, and that is what I wanted to do when the opportunity arose to compose a second piece for the BSO, this time to help open its 2019-20 season.

I grew up playing trumpet in orchestras, and listening to orchestral music has always been an important part of my life. The experience of a live performance is powerful. It is a ritual that congregates people so that we can listen to each other. It is a remarkable thing. These were some of my thoughts when I began to write this piece.

I feel that my music, at its heart, is really about music itself. My thoughts and feelings help create a scaffolding for my musical characters, but it is the elements of music – pitches, harmonies, motives – that create the music’s life. In the days after I finished writing, I realized that this piece is like a prism, through which many stories can be told. This is all to say, I hope you can let the piece take you on its own journey, whatever it may be.

Concerto for Orchestra is cast as a single, continuous movement in three parts. At the onset, two contrasting musical worlds are placed into juxtaposition, and possibly, conflict – clamorous and frenzied music centered on the pitch, E-flat, and still, intimate and fragile music centered a half-step away, on the pitch of E. This introduction provides building blocks for the music that follows. The first section consists of a series of connected episodes where we more intimately meet the instrumental families of the winds, strings and brass, with the percussion playing a supportive and guiding role throughout. At the center of the piece there is a fast, wildly racing section that culminates in a climax, leading into the final part, where we again find a sense of stillness, but also a chance to hear and understand earlier ideas in a new light.

Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director, Andris Nelsons.

- Eric Nathan