Boston Symphony Chamber Players Dates at Jordan Hall

Sunday, November 18,  January 13, March 10, and April 28, at 3 pm

The Boston Symphony Chamber Players announce their 2012­­–2013 season, which comprises four concerts in New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall and features an expansive selection of repertoire showcasing great chamber music from the 18th to the 21st centuries. The season begins November 18, 2012, when the Chamber Players are joined by composer-pianist Thomas Adès and pianistKirill Gerstein for a program of works by Elliott Carter and Brahms, on a program that will also feature Thomas Adès and pianist Kirill Gerstein in a work for piano four-hands, details of which will be announced at a later date. The season continues January 13, 2013, with music by Aaron Copland, Witold Lutosławski, and the celebrated young American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. In the third concert of the season,March 10, 2013, works of Brahms and Dvořák share a program with the mid-20th century Czech composerErwín Schulhoff. Finally, the Chamber Players bring 2012–2013 to a close on April 28, 2013, with works byMozart and Czech masters Janáček and Martinů.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012

The Chamber Players begin their 2012-13 season Sunday, November 18, 2012, at 3 p.m. in Jordan Hall, with a program pairing the intricate and multifaceted music of eminent American composer Elliott Carter with Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, one of the greatest of all Romantic chamber works. Carter, now 103 years old, is represented by two works from nearly 60 years apart. The Wind Quintet (1948) —inspired by a dedicated to the legendary composition teacher Nadia Boulanger—is a work solidly in the American neoclassical tradition dedicated to the composer’s teacher Nadia Boulanger. Carter’s Figment III for solo bass (2007) demonstrates Carter’s ability to conjure an intricately contrapuntal sound-world from a single instrument. The concert begins with guest pianists Thomas Adès and Kirill Gerstein performing a work to be announced and concludes with Mr. Gerstein joining the Chamber Players for Brahms’s Piano Quintet.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2013

On Sunday, January 13, 2013, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players celebrate the music of relatively recent vintage with works by iconic American composer Aaron Copland; Witold Lutosławski, Poland’s greatest 20th-century composer; and the young, California-based Gabriela Lena Frank. Copland’s original version for chamber orchestra of Appalachian Spring (1944), written for the choreographer Martha Graham, used folk-music influences to tap into America’s sense of its own history and optimism. The score also won the Pulitzer Prize in music.. Lutosławski’s Dance Preludes for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass moves the program into the second half of the 20th century and also draws on the folk music of its composer’s native land. The concert’s final work—Frank’s Sueños de Chambi for flute and piano (2008), was inspired by the work of famous Peruvian photographer Martín Chambi and draws on Frank’s own multifaceted cultural heritage.

SUNDAY, MARCH 10, 2013

Jordan Hall comes to life Sunday, March 10, 2013 with the music of Dvořák and Brahms, Romantic composers with extremely different styles who maintained a close friendship and frequently provided artistic advice for one another. The program begins with Dvořák’s Bagatelles for two violins, cello, and harmonium, Op. 47, playful works whose instrumentation was inspired by the presence of the harmonium—a smallish variation of a reed organ—in the home of the Dvořák’s friend Josef Srb-Debrnov, with whom the composer often played chamber music. The second half of the concert is devoted to Brahms’s Clarinet Trio in A, Op. 114, an understated yet elegantly crafted work dedicated to the principal clarinetist of the orchestra in Meiningen, a town Brahms loved to visit. The program is rounded out by Erwín Schulhoff’s delightful Concertino for flute, viola, and double bass (1925). Schulhoff, a Prague-born Jewish composer who died of tuberculosis in a concentration camp in 1942, was a modernist with a distinctive style showing the influence of neoclassicism, jazz, and Czech folk music.

SUNDAY, APRIL 28, 2013

The Boston Symphony Chamber Players conclude the 2012-13 season with a program pairing Mozart with two Czech masters. The first work on the bill is Janáček’s Mládi (Youth)—scored for flute, two clarinets, oboe, bassoon, and horn—composed in 1924 at the height of its late-blooming composer’s celebrity in the month he turned 70 and designed to capture the simple joy of childhood memories. Bohuslav Martinů, of the Czech generation that followed Janáček’s, wrote the second work on the program—the Nonet for winds and strings—in 1949. Its combination of subdued neoclassicism and tastefully applied modern techniques, allied with earnest but unsentimental emotion, is typical of the composer. The concert and the 2012-13 season come to a close with Mozart’s String Quintet, K.516, a work tinged with melancholy and passionate drama and written in G minor, a key the composer saved for his most serious and personal compositions.

BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS

One of the world’s most distinguished chamber music ensembles sponsored by a major symphony orchestra and made up of that orchestra’s principal players, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players include first-desk string, woodwind, and brass players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Founded in 1964 during Erich Leinsdorf’s tenure as BSO music director, the Chamber Players can perform virtually any work within the vast chamber music literature, expanding their range of repertory by calling upon other BSO members or enlisting the services of such distinguished artists as BSO Music Director James Levine (as both pianist and conductor), Emanuel Ax, André Previn, Leif Ove Andsnes, Lars Vogt, Garrick Ohlsson, and Inon Barnatan. The Chamber Players’ activities include an annual four-concert series in Boston’s Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory, regular appearances at Tanglewood, and a busy touring schedule. In addition to their appearances throughout the United States, they have performed in Europe, Japan, South America, and the Soviet Union. In September 2008, sponsored by Cunard Line, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players performed on the Queen Mary 2’s transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton, England. Among their many recordings are the Brahms string quintets and works by John Harbison, Aaron Copland, and Leon Kirchner, all on Nonesuch; and the quintets for clarinet and strings by Mozart and Brahms with former BSO principal clarinet, the late Harold Wright, on Philips. Recent recordings on BSO Classics are of Mozart chamber music for winds and strings (the Clarinet Quintet in A, the Horn Quintet in E-flat, the F major Oboe Quartet, and the Flute Quartet in A, K.298); Plain Song, Fantastic Dances: Chamber Music By American Composers, an all-American CD of works by Lukas Foss, William Bolcom, Michael Gandolfi, and Osvaldo Golijov, released last spring; and Profanes et Sacrées: 20th-Century French Chamber Music, featuring works by Ravel, Tomasi, Dutilleux, Debussy, and Françaix, released last fall.

TICKET INFORMATION

Subscriptions to the Boston Symphony Chamber Players’ 2012-13 series are priced at $72, $92, and $128, and are available from the BSO’s Subscription Office by calling 617-266-7575. Single tickets for the individual concerts are priced at $22, $29, and $38, and go on sale August 6 at 10 a.m. through SymphonyCharge at 617-266-1200, on www.bso.org, at the Symphony Hall Box Office, or at the Jordan Hall Box Office at 30 Gainsborough Street. On the day of the concert, tickets may only be purchased at Jordan Hall. Jordan Hall is wheelchair-accessible.

All programs are subject to change. For current program information, dial 617-CONCERT (617-266-2378).