The Score | Boston-Leipzig Express

Andris Nelsons is music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra—and he’s also music director of Germany’s Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. The two organizations have made the most of the situation by launching a five-year cultural partnership. In February, the Boston Symphony hosted Leipzig Week in Boston, performing Leipzig-themed orchestra programs and displaying an exhibit at Boston’s Symphony Hall with materials from the BSO Archives and from the Gewandhaus Orchestra exploring historical connections between the two orchestras. A similar Boston Week in Leipzig is set for this summer in Germany. The history of close cultural connections between Boston and Leipzig began in 1881, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s founder, Henry Lee Higginson, appointed Leipzig Conservatory-trained Georg Henschel as the BSO’s first conductor. Boston’s Symphony Hall, built in 1900, was modeled after the Gewandhaus and has similar acoustics.