Alsop Conducts Shostakovich

Marin Alsop was in the news last week as she began her inaugural season as music director of the Sao Paulo Symphony in Brazil. She will also continue until at least 2015 as music director of the Baltimore Symphony. For more than 20 years she has also headed the Cabrillo Festival in California.

In this video she conducts Amsterdam's famed Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in some lighter music by Shostakovich. As a young man Shostakovich loved jazz and attended performances whenever he could. In the 1930s he even tried writing some of his own jazz. The result, however, often sounded more like Rossini or Johann Strauss. Some of this music is to be found in his Jazz Suites for orchestra.

Check out my companion video this week on LSM in which Marin Alsop talks about life in Baltimore.

Paul E. Robinson