Andris Nelsons conducts Bartók and Shostakovich — With Janine Jansen

Take a seat at the Royal Concertgebouw and enjoy the stylings of their namesake orchestra in an electrifying concert of early 20th-century music! Virtuoso violinist Janine Jansen takes the stage first to dazzle us with her technique, her breathtaking artistry, and her exquisite phrasing in Bartók's Violin Concerto, a masterwork composed between 1907 and 1908 but not premiered until 1958, thirteen years after the composer's death.

The renowned ensemble then leads us eastward into Russia, following in the footsteps of Dmitri Shostakovich and his "Leningrad" Symphony No. 7, for a faultless interpretation in which the rapport between conductor and orchestra is palpable. One of the few works by Shostakovich to have met straight away with nearly unanimous praise among audiences and critics on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the 1941 symphony—written while the composer was fleeing the German invasion—has become an enduring symbol of resistance to totalitarianism.