Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra: Barber, Elgar, Shostakovich

barber                              

The School for Scandal Overture

Elgar

Cello Concerto                  

Shostakovich

Symphony No. 5                 

Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra

Benjamin Zander, conductor

Zlatomir Fung, cello

There will be no pre-concert Guide to the music with Benjamin Zander before the concert.

It is with great anticipation that I await my first opportunity to work with local 22-year-old cellist Zlatomir Fung, gold medalist in the most recent Tchaikovsky Cello Competition. Zlatomir’s dazzling virtuosity, sparkling intelligence, and nobility of expression made him an ideal protagonist for the Elgar.

The second half of the concert is devoted to Shostakovich’s great Fifth Symphony. It is enormous work—not so much in its length as in its emotional reach. It was the piece that placed Shostakovich front and center on the world’s musical stage, proclaiming him as the foremost composer of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. And, by giving the illusion of placating the authorities, this symphony may also have saved his life. Since then, it has come to be regarded as music’s greatest symbol of the power of the artist to raise his voice in protest, in even the darkest of times.

–Benjamin Zander, conductor