2024-2025 Season

Symphonies & Serenades

All concerts are on Sundays at 3 PM.

There is no balcony seating at United Parish (210 Harvard Avenue, Brookline).

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.


Beethoven 3 & Julian Rhee: ‘Eroica’ & Sibelius

September 29, 2024 - All Saints Church

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.



PROGRAM

Dvořák: Serenade for Winds

Bach: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring

Various works for chorus & other seasonal music with members of Apollo Club, Heritage Chorale, VOICES Boston Children’s Choir

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).

Zing! Went the Strings Of My Heart

October 27, 2024 - All Saints Church

PROGRAM

Libby Larsen: String Symphony

Yehudi Wyner: Duo Concertino for Viola & Piano (with Kim Kashkashian & Robert Levin)

Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings

Bach & Bohemia: Dvořák’s Serenade & Choral Favorites

December 15, 2024 - All Saints Church


PROGRAM

Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel: Overture in C major

Sibelius: Concerto for Violin in D minor (Julian Rhee)

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)

From Spain to Vienna: Martines, García, & Mozart’sJupiter’

March 2, 2025 - United Parish, Coolidge Corner, Brookline

PROGRAM

Marianna Martines: Overture in C major

Simón García: Double bass Concerto (Susan Hagen)

Mozart: Symphony No. 41 (“Jupiter”)

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.

PRICING

Premium reserved seating in the orchestra center and the balcony center

5-concert subscription $300 3-concert subscription $180

Orchestra sides general admission

5-concert subscription $200 3-concert subscription $120

TICKETS

Premium Ticket $65

Orchestra Sides Ticket $45

Young Professionals Sides $15

Youth tickets $10