Boston Symphony Orchestra

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the most prominent U.S. symphonic ensembles, with deep roots in the Germanic practices that formed the model for American orchestral culture. The orchestra's catalog of recordings on the RCA Victor label in the middle of the 20th century, artistically ambitious and sonically top-notch thanks to the ambiance of Boston's magnificent Symphony Hall, continues to set a standard. The Boston Symphony conductorship remains coveted among European conductors as well as homegrown artists, and the group's recordings hold international appeal. The group's recording catalog includes albums devoted to the violin concertos, cello concertos, and piano concertos of Shostakovich in 2025, all led by Latvian-born conductor Andris Nelsons. The Boston Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1881 with principal support from banker Henry Lee Higginson, who also spearheaded the construction of Symphony Hall and its opening in 1900. Its membership consisted largely of German-trained musicians, and its first conductor, George Henschel, was a friend of Brahms. Subsequent conductors were German or, in the case of Arthur Nikisch, Hungarian. Especially important was Karl Muck, a former conductor of the Berlin Court Opera (now the Berlin State Opera), who led the orchestra from 1906 to 1908 and again from 1912 to 1918 after the leadership of Max Fiedler in the interim. Muck stepped down and was held in an internment camp in Georgia after espousing pro-German sympathies during World War I. However, beginning with Pierre Monteux in 1919, the Boston Symphony boasted a series of internationally renowned and non-German conductors. Monteux was French; Serge Koussevitsky, who led the orchestra from 1924 to 1949, was Russian and a towering figure who commissioned numerous modern works and led the world premieres of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, among many other now-standard works and founded the annual Tanglewood Music Festival and its associated talent-development classes, with the Boston Symphony in residence. The group made recordings as early as 1906, and its first commercial recording, an album featuring works by Tchaikovsky and Wagner, came in 1917. Koussevitsky was succeeded by Alsatian-French Charles Munch (1949-1963), who continued to bring French music to the stage of Symphony Hall and to RCA Victor recordings such as The French Touch (1959). The recordings of Austrian-Jewish conductor Erich Leinsdorf were central to collections in the LP era in the U.S. Leinsdorf was succeeded for several years by the ailing William Steinberg and in 1973 by Japanese-born Seiji Ozawa, whose leadership was artistically controversial but long, and also marked by significant recordings, mostly on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Another conductor with an operatic background, James Levine, followed Ozawa in 2002; he stepped down due to ill health and Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons, who had taken on Mahler's vast Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand") as an emergency replacement for Levine, became conductor in 2014. Nelsons remained conductor as of the mid-2020s, and he revived the orchestra's fortunes at Deutsche Grammophon, leading the group in a live cycle of the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich. A notable feature of the orchestra's musical life is the existence of the Boston Pops light music orchestra, with personnel drawn from the ranks of the Boston Symphony; under conductor Arthur Fiedler (son of Max), that group attained unprecedented popularity on American radio and television as well as in live concerts. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has also been heard on the scores of two films by director Steven Spielberg, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, with the scores' composer, John Williams, as conductor. Many of the orchestra's LP recordings have been reissued in digital form. By the time Nelsons headed the orchestra's three 2025 Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Shostakovich's concertos, featuring top stars Yuja Wang (piano), Baiba Skride (violin), and Yo-Yo Ma (cello), the group's catalog consisted of at least 225 recordings, plus many more from the LP and 78 rpm eras. ~ James Manheim, Rovi