First Monday at Jordan Hall: Beethoven, Kim, and Strauss

March’s First Monday concert welcomes special guest artist Paul Watkins in the dual roles of cellist and conductor in a program that speaks across time and memory.

Hear Beethoven’s familiar Eroica in an entirely new way with Shai Wosner’s ingenious reduction for piano quartet featuring Watkins and First Monday’s new Co-Artistic Directors. Strauss’s transcendent late work for 23 solo strings, written during the final months of World War II, elegiacally reflects on the incalculable losses and contains echoes of the Marcia Funebre from Beethoven’s Eroica. And Earl Kim, for many years a Boston creative fixture, reflects on his experiences as a combat intelligence officer in the US Air Force — in particular, flying over the  destruction of Nagasaki 24 hours after the bomb was dropped — in his 1981 work Now and Then. 

The live stream of this event is available to NEC Community members only. To watch the stream, please click the “Streaming Access” button at the top of the page and enter the NEC Community streaming password on the video window labeled “NEC-Produced Stream” when prompted.

All are invited to attend a special Meet the Artist preconcert talk at 7:00 p.m. in Jordan Hall. First Monday Artistic Co-Chair Soovin Kim will be joined in conversation by special guest cellist and conductor Paul Watkins.