Boston Symphony is rhapsodizing over its orchestral Grammy

BOSTON – The Grammys weren’t just about Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is rhapsodizing over its win for best orchestral performance. The orchestra also has a partial claim to the Grammy for best opera recording, which involved former conductor Seiji Ozawa.

The BSO and musical director Andris Nelsons won the orchestral performance prize for “Shostakovich Under Stalin’s Shadow” — music that sprang from the terror and turbulence of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet dictatorship.

It was the orchestra’s first recording in a new partnership with the Deutsche Grammophon label, and its seventh Grammy overall.

Nelsons called Monday’s win “an extraordinary honour.” The Latvia-born maestro said he hopes it will bring new attention to classical music — and new fans of the genre.

“This incredibly gratifying acknowledgement of our work together truly provides a new level of inspiration for us as we continue to move forward,” he said.

“Shostakovich Under Stalin’s Shadow” was recorded live during concerts last April at Boston’s Symphony Hall and was released in July. Envisioned as a multiyear project, it focuses on works that Dmitri Shostakovich composed starting in the mid-1930s after he fell out of favour with Stalin and the Soviet regime.

The Grammy Award-winning performance includes the BSO’s rendition of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, which he is said to have written in response to Stalin’s death in 1953.

Ozawa shared the opera recording award, his first Grammy win, with Japan’s Saito Kinen Orchestra.

Ozawa, who was music director in Boston from 1973 to 2002, won for a disc of Ravel’s “L’Enfant et Les Sortileges” (“The Child and the Spells”) featuring soprano Isabel Leonard, the Japanese orchestra and its festival and children’s choruses, recorded on Decca, a Deutsche Grammophon sister label.

___

Online: https://www.bso.org/