We open our season by welcoming back violinist Julian Rhee months after his being awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, adding to his string of victories in important international competitions. Julian performs the dramatic and beautiful Sibelius concerto, which the orchestra precedes with Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s bold and skillful Overture. The concert is completed with Beethoven’s revolutionary Eroica Symphony, which forever altered the scale and sweep of future composers’ musical and structural imagination.

Grammy Award-winning composer Libby Larsen’s three-movement String Symphony was inspired by her first childhood visit to an orchestra concert, specifically her being mesmerized by the violins moving their bows in unison, and by the beautiful sound they produced. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Yehudi Wyner’s Duo Concertino was commissioned by BB&B in honor of his 95th birthday, specifically for this afternoon’s soloists. This afternoon's concert features its world premiere. After intermission, the orchestra shares Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, surely one of the most glorious works in the string orchestra repertoire, a deeply satisfying masterpiece to play and to hear.

Our instrumental ensemble anchors this holiday program with Dvořák’s beloved Serenade for Winds, ‘Cello, & Bass. These BB&B principal players are then joined by singers young and old from Boston-area choruses – the Apollo Club (Boston’s oldest men’s chorus), the Heritage Chorale (a mixed chorus from Metrowest), and VOICES Boston (a children’s choir based in Brookline) – to  sing Christmas, Chanukah, seasonal, folk, swing, world, and composed songs, including Bach, Beethoven, & Brahms (& José Feliciano & Mel Tormé).

Composer Marianna Martines, though of Spanish extraction, was born in Vienna, where she studied with Haydn and was a contemporary of Mozart and Beethoven. Her sparkling overture owes as much to the high baroque as to the early classical style. Contemporary Spanish composer Simón García’s Concerto for Double bass and String Orchestra was written in 2018 and given its US premiere by Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra Principal Bassist, Susan Hagen, four years later. Sue, a frequent member of our orchestra here at Faneuil Hall, presents this lively work’s Boston premiere today. After intermission we exult in the glories of Mozart’s final symphony, given the nickname “Jupiter” by later admirers in awe of the composer’s complete mastery, imagination, inventiveness, and musical power.

Composer Emilie Mayer’s life overlapped with Beethoven and Brahms, and she spent most of it in Berlin. Her compositional style evolved from a classic Viennese style to a more Romantic expression, and both these qualities can be heard in her Overture, which opens this program. Mendelssohn’s setting of Psalm 42 was described by him as “my best sacred piece; the best thing I have composed in this manner. I hold it in greater regard than most of my other compositions.” In this gorgeous, heartfelt work we are joined by the clarion soprano of Sonja Dutoit Tengblad, and the New World Chorale celebrating its 25th anniversary season.  After intermission, the orchestra presents Brahms’ first major symphonic work: his Serenade No. 1. A robust, glowing work, which makes skillful and idiomatic use of the full complement of strings, winds, brass, and timpani, the Serenade is written in six movements including an Allegro, two Scherzos, a Minuet, a Rondo, and a lyrical Adagio.