A 20 Boston

The United States of America, a promised land? Free America! celebrates the ideas and hopes which preoccupied the young American Republic in the years 1770-80: the need for freedom of assembly, a willingness to rebel and go into battle fully aware of the cost, but above all, a desire for a new harmony whose songs, hymn tunes, and marches accompany the long journey to a new “promised land.” A powerful message which informs the first collaboration between harmonia mundi and Anne Azéma now leading the Boston Camerata.

In this installment in 'an ongoing Shostakovich survey that has rightly won him three Grammy Awards' (New York Times), Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bookend the composer's brilliant, often turbulent symphonic career. Nearly half a century lies between Shostakovich's triumphant debut with the 'First', premiered before his 20th birthday, and the 'Fifteenth', an inventory of influences written under the shadow of his own mortality. Penned just two years earlier, the 'Fourteenth' is a symphonic song cycle, and the Chamber Symphony is a skillful adaptation of that tragic masterpiece, the Eighth String Quartet.