Andris Nelsons conducts Julia Adolphe

In three BSO concerts, Andris Nelsons and his frequent collaborator, English pianist Paul Lewis, will perform all five of Beethoven’s piano concertos, and each concert opens with a BSO co-commissioned piece by an American woman.

The American composer Julia Adolphe has been praised for the sonic and narrative inventiveness of her music. About her new work, she says, “Makeshift Castle captures contrasting states of permanence and ephemerality, of perseverance and disintegration, of determination and surrender.”

The Second and Third concertos were composed about five years apart. While both were strongly influenced by Wolfgang Mozart’s concertos, No. 3 in C minor exhibits more of Beethoven’s flair for drama and innovation.

Julia Adolphe’s music is described as “alive with invention” (The New Yorker), “colorful, mercurial, deftly orchestrated” (The New York Times) displaying “a remarkable gift for sustaining a compelling musical narrative” (Musical America). Her works are performed across the U.S. and abroad by renowned orchestras and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, Belgian National Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Verona Quartet, soprano Hila Plitmann, and pianist Gloria Cheng, among others.

Current commissions include an orchestral work for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a violin concerto for Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic with concertmaster Martin Chalifour. Adolphe’s comic opera for all ages, A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears, based on the novel by Jules Feiffer with libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann, received initial workshops directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer at National Sawdust and Boston Court Pasadena in 2019. Her awards include a 2017 ASCAP Young Composer Award, a 2016 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, a 2016 OPERA America Discovery Grant, and a 2015 Charles Ives Scholarship from the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Ticket includes admission to 6 p.m. Prelude Concert — tonight (Friday July 29) —

Julia Adolphe — Veil of Leaves, for string quartet (8)
Moszkowski — Suite in G minor for two violins and piano, Op. 71 (18)
John Williams — Theme from Schindler’s List, for violin, viola and piano (4)
Beethoven — String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, Serioso (22)

With Sheila Fiekowsky and Bracha Malkin on violin, Steven Ansell on viola, Adam Esbensen on cello and Brett Hodgdon on piano, in Ozawa Hall.

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