BSO's 'Off the Cuff' Concert Series to Feature Tchaikovsky, 4/10-11

Music Director Marin Alsop leads her final Off the Cuff concert of the 2014-2015 season in collaboration with playwright in residence and director Didi Balle for a symphonic play exploring the life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as he wrote his Fifth Symphony. The semi-staged production, taking place on Friday, April 10, at 8:15 p.m. at The Music Center at Strathmore and Saturday, April 11, at 7 p.m. at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, will take audiences into the mind of Tchaikovsky as he expresses his thoughts and feelings on fate, death, sexuality, money, madness and love.

"Audiences will see the composer come to life," said Didi Balle. "We will see and hear this symphony through Tchaikovsky's lens at a time when he acknowledged that he must 'surrender and submit to fate' in order to reconcile himself with his own life, so when the time comes, he will die a peaceful death."

Maestra Alsop also leads the BSO for a classical program of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 on Thursday, April 9, at 8 p.m. at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and Sunday, April 12, at 3 p.m. at The Music Center at Strathmore. These concerts also include Shostakovich's Festive Overture and feature the debut of guest flute soloist Adam Walker in the East Coast premiere of Kevin Puts' Flute Concerto.

Tchaikovsky's most beloved Symphony No. 5 delivers an achingly beautiful, graceful movement leading into a melancholic waltz. The menacing theme of Fate haunts throughout the piece before it is triumphantly overcome in the finale. Composed in the stroke of inspiration by Shostakovich, Festive Overture reflects the energetic imagination of the composer and the exuberance of the 37th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution for which it was written.

Flutist Adam Walker and composer Kevin Puts will each make their BSO debut in a performance of Puts' Flute Concerto. The concerto opens with a lyrically themed movement built on a three-note motif that gives way to a Mozart-inspired environment before culminating in a spirited close.