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Violinist Baiba Skride parlayed prominent competition wins early in her career into international concert prominence. She is also a noted chamber music player.

Skride was born in the Latvian capital of Riga on February 19, 1981. She grew up in a musical family; she, along with sisters Lauma (piano) and Linda (viola), took their first music lessons from their grandmother, and they have continued to perform together. Skride's mother was a pianist, and her father was a choral conductor. By age five, Skride was concertizing on the violin. She enrolled in 1995 in a school for musically talented youngsters in Riga and then in the Rostock Conservatory in Germany, commuting for a time between the two cities. In Rostock, her teacher was Petru Munteanu. Skride also took master classes with Ruggiero Ricci and Lewis Kaplan. Her record of competition prizes, which dated back to a youth event in Bulgaria in 1988, culminated in a win at the 2001 Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition in Brussels. That led to concerto appearances with top orchestras all over Europe, North America, and Asia, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic. As a chamber musician, she has been joined by cellists Sol Gabetta and Alban Gerhardt and harpist Xavier de Maistre, among many others. For a time, Skride performed on the 1734 "Ex Baron Feilitzsch" Stradivarius, owned by violinist Gidon Kremer.

Skride has been a prolific recording artist. In her early twenties, she was signed to the Sony Classical label, replacing Hilary Hahn on its roster when the latter moved to Deutsche Grammophon. Her recording debut was an album of Mozart and Haydn violin concertos with the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Chamber Orchestra. Two of her Sony albums won the prestigious Echo Klassik awards in Germany. After her 2008 album Souvenir Russe, she signed with the Orfeo label, where she has continued to issue new albums almost annually. She has focused mostly on standard repertory but was featured on a recording of composer Heino Eller's violin concerto on Ondine in 2018; that year, she also issued a recording of violin concertos by Bernstein, Korngold, and Miklos Rósza. In 2020, Skride released a new recording of Mozart's five violin concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under conductor Eivind Aadland, featuring new cadenzas by Skride herself. Skride returned on Orfeo in 2022 with the album Violin Unlimited, featuring solo violin sonatas, and in 2024, she was heard on a recording of Britten's Violin Concerto with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, conducted by Marin Alsop. ~ James Manheim

Dmitry Shostakovich was a Russian composer whose symphonies and quartets, numbering 15 each, are among the greatest examples from the 20th century of these classic forms. His style evolved from the brash humor and experimental character of his first period, exemplified by the operas The Nose and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, into both the more introverted melancholy and nationalistic fervor of his second phase (the Symphonies No. 5 and No. 7, "Leningrad"), and finally into the defiant and bleak mood of his last period (exemplified by the Symphony No. 14 and Quartet No. 15). Early in his career his music showed the influence of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, especially in his prodigious and highly successful First Symphony. He could effectively communicate a melancholic depth and profound sense of anguish, as one hears in many of his symphonies, concertos, and quartets. Solomon Volkov, in his controversial Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich explains the composer's seeming bombast as deft satire of the pomposity of the Soviet state, pointing to the "forced rejoicing" of Fifth Symphony's ending. Typical traits of Shostakovich's style include short, reiterated melodic or rhythmic figures, motifs of one or two pitches or intervals, and lugubrious and manic string writing.

Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg in 1906 and educated at the Petrograd Conservatory. The acid style of his early Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk irritated Stalin, and Shostakovich was attacked in the Soviet press. Fearing imprisonment, he withdrew his already rehearsed Fourth Symphony; his Fifth Symphony (1937) carried the subtitle "A Soviet Artist's Reply to Just Criticism." It is more ingenious than most critics have fathomed, for it managed to satisfy both the backward tastes of the party censors and those of more demanding aesthetes in the West.

The 1941 German invasion of Russia inspired the composer's Seventh Symphony, subtitled "Leningrad." Impressed by the symphony's epic-heroic character, Toscanini, Koussevitzky, and Stokowski vied for the Western Hemisphere premiere; the score had to be microfilmed, flown to Teheran, driven to Cairo, and flown out. The work became an enormous success the world over, but eventually fell into obscurity. Still, the composer had for a time become a worldwide celebrity, his picture even appearing on the cover of Time.

Shostakovich ran afoul of the government again in 1948, when an infamous decree was issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party accusing Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other prominent composers of "formalist perversions." For some time he wrote mostly works glorifying Soviet life or history. Artistic repression diminished in post-Stalinist Russia, but curiously Shostakovich still drew in his modernist horns until the Thirteenth Symphony, "Babi Yar," a 1962 work based on poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The work provoked major controversy because of its first movement's subject: Russian oppression of the Jews.

In 1966 Shostakovich wrote his Second Cello Concerto, a work on an even higher level than his solid First, but one that did not capture as much attention from either artists or the public. That year, Shostakovich was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. He continued to compose, his works growing more sparsely scored and darker, the subject of death becoming prominent. His Fourteenth Symphony (1969), really a collection of songs on texts by Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbecker, and Rilke, is a death-obsessed work of considerable dissonance and showing little regard for the Socialist Realism still demanded by the state. Shostakovich died on August 9, 1975. ~ Rovi Staff

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 catalogue 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, continue to set a standard. 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 musician, 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. But 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 BSO in residence. Koussevitsky was succeeded by Alsatian-French Charles Münch (1949-1963) and the Austrian-Jewish Erich Leinsdorf, whose RCA recordings 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, was named conductor. His contract has been extended through 2022, and he has led the orchestra in new recordings with Deutsche Grammophon, including 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 BSO; 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. ~ James Manheim

Andris Nelsons has held major conducting posts on both the concert and operatic stages, and in each realm, has distinguished himself as an incisive interpreter of a broad range of music. Whether conducting Puccini at the Met, Wagner at Bayreuth, or Stravinsky with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Nelsons has managed to win over both critics and the public alike. He is the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. In 2022, Nelsons led the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig in the latest installment of their survey of Bruckner's symphonies on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Nelsons was born in Riga, Latvia, on November 18, 1978. His parents and stepfather were musicians, and at an early age, Nelsons studied piano but took up the trumpet at 12. He later sang in his mother's early music ensemble and played trumpet in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra. After local studies, Nelsons began studying conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Alexander Titov. In 2002, he began studying privately with famed conductor Mariss Jansons. Nelsons' orchestral repertory includes large portions of Mozart, Mahler, and Shostakovich. His operatic repertory takes in much Wagner and Puccini, as well as Bizet, Tchaikovsky, and Richard Strauss.

Nelsons has conducted around the globe, including throughout Europe, the U.S., and Japan. He served as principal conductor of the Latvian National Opera from 2003-2007. In 2006, he took on a second important post, this one as chief conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, a position he held until 2009. From 2007, Nelsons began making regular appearances in the U.K., and that September was named music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, beginning in the 2008-2009 season. He held this post until the conclusion of the 2014-2015 season. 2009 saw Nelsons' debut at the Met, leading a performance of Puccini's Turandot. The following year, Nelsons made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival with a production of Wagner's Lohengrin; this followed a concert performance given in Birmingham with the City of Birmingham Symphony. In 2011, a highly praised reading of Mahler's Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall with the Boston Symphony Orchestra marked two more important debuts for Nelsons; this was his first performance at Carnegie Hall and his first time leading the Boston Symphony. Nelsons was named the Boston Symphony's 15th music director in 2014, after several years of guest conducting. In 2018, Nelsons was named the 21st Gewandhauskapellmeister (music director) of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.

Nelsons has an exclusive recording contract with the Deutsche Grammophon label but has also recorded for Decca and Orfeo, among others. He has continued to receive acclaim for his recordings, especially those of his continuing surveys of the symphonies of Shostakovich, with the Boston Symphony, and Bruckner (which is paired with music by Wagner), with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. In 2020, Nelsons received contract extensions with both groups: the Boston Symphony until 2025 and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig until 2027. Nelsons led the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig on a recording of Bruckner's first and fifth symphonies with Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde in 2022. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke