Andris Nelsons — Fazil Say and Brahms rehearsal

BSO director Andris Nelsons rehearses Fazil Say and Brahms with internationally recognized soprano Ying Fang, bass-baritone Shenyang, and pianists Arthur and Lucas Jussen and the BSO.

Fazil Say — Phoenix (Anka Kuşu), for piano four-hands and orchestra, an American premiere and BSO co-commission

Johannes Brahms — German Requiem

The Turkish composer Fazil Say is also an outstanding pianist whose music is informed by a lifelong commitment to spontaneity and improvisation. He wrote his piano four-hands concerto Phoenix, a BSO co-commission receiving its American premiere in this concert, for the remarkable Dutch duo-pianists Lucas and Arthur Jussen, who gave the world premiere in January 2022 with the Munich Philharmonic.

With the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Johannes Brahms’ masterpiece A German Requiem is an utterly personal but scarcely ceremonial work, the BSO says, setting Biblical texts in Martin Luther’s German translations. Returning as soloists with the BSO, Chinese soprano Ying Fang and Chinese bass-baritone Shenyang are making their Tanglewood debuts.

This is a rehearsal for Sunday afternoon’s concert.

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In the 2020-2021 season, Ying Fang makes her house debut at both Dutch National Opera and Santa Fe Opera as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, a role she was also scheduled to reprise at Lyric Opera of Chicago. In concert, she joins Dutch National Opera in a performance of Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle. Previously scheduled concert engagements include Haydn’s Creation with Music of the Baroque, under the baton of Jane Glover, as well as both Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 Resurrection and Symphony No. 8 at the Mahler Festival in Leipzig, under the baton of Andris Nelsons.

“Peter Sellars brings a message of love to Mozart’s Idomeneo at Salzburg Festival. There’s plenty to admire at the Felsenreitschule, but the evening belongs to soprano Ying Fang….This diminutive singer has a voice that can stop time, pure and rich and open and consummately expressive.” – Financial Times

Chinese bass-baritone Shenyang was brought swiftly to international attention as winner of the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, and an array of important debuts followed including at the Metropolitan Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Bayerische Staatsoper, Opernhaus Zürich and Washington National Opera. This versatile artist has since established himself as one of the finest voices of his generation, amassed an expansive repertoire for both opera and concert stage, and enjoys ongoing collaborative relationships with many of today’s pre-eminent conductors.

After studies at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, The Julliard School, Salzburg Young Artist Project and the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Program, Shenyang launched his operatic career in roles by Rossini, Mozart and Handel.

Now focused on a more dramatic repertoire, Shenyang has in the last seasons made several key role debuts: Don Pizarro in Beethoven’s Leonore with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck; Jochanaan in Salome with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Liebreich; Gunther in Götterdämmerung with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under Jaap van Zweden; and Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde at the 2021 Glyndebourne Festival under Robin Ticciati.