Autumn in New England: If there’s anything more beautiful than the foliage, it’s the richly colorful season of classical music. Here are some of the concerts and productions about which I’m most excited. And some that I at least think you should know about and consider for yourself. Either way, I don’t know where else you’d find a more impressive variety.
And as I like to remind you every season, there are numerous terrific, often free programs at Boston’s schools and conservatories, and please be on the lookout for other performances I might not yet know about myself.
SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS | VISITING ARTISTS | OPERA & CHORAL MUSIC | SOLO & CHAMBER MUSIC | EARLY MUSIC | CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS
Sept. 26-Nov. 30
Few people would disagree that Boston is blessed with a great orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, one of the so-called “Big Five” American orchestras. However there is a bigger range of opinions about the BSO’s music director, Andris Nelsons. A front-page news story in The Boston Globe in July showed Nelsons doing an impressive taekwondo side kick (he has earned a second-degree black belt). But in the greater musical community, he hasn’t yet earned an equivalent black belt for his conducting.
One of his biggest tests will be his upcoming performances of one of the most challenging works in the entire symphonic repertoire, Mahler’s massively ambitious Symphony No. 8, the so-called “Symphony of a Thousand.” The impressive vocalists include sopranos Latonia Moore, Christine Goerke and Ying Fang, tenor Andreas Schager, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green (Oct. 4-6).
American composer Carlos Simon is now the first musician to serve as the BSO’s new composer chair, which seems like a new name for the previous position of “artistic partner” that the BSO created for the celebrated British composer/conductor/pianist Thomas Adès in 2018. Nelsons leads Simon’s “Wake Up: A Concerto for Orchestra” in an all-American program along with Sarah Kirkland Snider’s “Forward into Light,” Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto (with BSO principal clarinetist William R. Hudgins), and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (Sept. 26-28). That weekend, Simon curates a double rarity for the BSO: a free concert and a program devoted entirely to Black composers. Simon himself joins the BSO Chamber players in music by members of the “Blacknificent 7,” a collective that includes Simon himself, Jessie Montgomery, Damien Geter, Dave Ragland and Jasmine Barnes (Union United Methodist Church, Sept. 29).
Nelsons will also lead a program featuring super-star soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry in “The Brightness of Light,” a 2019 song cycle based on the letters between painter Georgia O’Keefe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz, by Kevin Puts (who wrote a major part for Fleming in his Virginia Woolf opera “The Hours”). We are also promised “lush projections” by Wendall Harrington. This concert also includes a Mozart overture and symphony (Nov. 21-23).
Among the guest conductors visiting the BSO is the New Jersey and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Xian Zhang making her Symphony Hall debut in a program of Chen Yi, the Schumann Piano Concert with the remarkable Jonathan Biss, and Mozart’s great Symphony No. 39 (Oct. 17-19). And Sir Antonio Pappano leads works by Hannah Kendall, Franz Liszt (his Second Piano Concerto with star pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet), and Richard Strauss (Oct. 24-26).
Sept. 29, Oct. 27 & Dec. 15
Waiting for the renovation of Faneuil Hall to be completed, Steven Lipsitt’s BB&B will be performing its three fall concerts at Brookline’s All Saints Parish. Recent Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, violinist Julian Rhee, returns to BB&B in the Sibelius Violin Concerto on a program beginning with a Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel overture and Beethoven’s landmark “Eroica” Symphony (Sept. 29).
Postponed from last season’s celebration of “Yehudi Wyner at 95,” the beloved composer’s much-anticipated Duo Concertino, commissioned by BB&B and written for two of his most celebrated friends, pianist Robert Levin and violist Kim Kashkashian, will happily be receiving its world premiere—with Levin and Kashkashian. The concert also includes a string symphony by Libby Larson and Tchaikovsky’s gorgeous Serenade for Strings (Oct. 27).
BB&B’s pre-Christmas concert features Dvořák’s lovely Serenade for Winds, Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and a selection of choral music sung by members of Apollo Club, VOICES Boston Children’s Choir and Heritage Chorale (Dec. 15).
Oct. 20
“Ancient Cultures New Musics” is the title of NEP’s first concert this season. Under the direction of Tianhui Ng, the program includes the Boston premiere of Gabriela Ortiz’s 2019 “Antropolis,” Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and the world premiere of Eric Nathan’s flute concerto “The Seas Between Us” (with flutist Alejandro Escuer), an NEP commission.
Oct. 20, Nov. 3 & 17
While the rest of us are getting older, the beloved conductor Benjamin Zander, who celebrated his 85th birthday this past March, seems to be getting younger. This fall, he’s leading his Boston Philharmonic — the orchestra of student, amateur and professional musicians he founded in 1979 — in two ambitious and thoughtful programs. Violinist Guy Braunstein (former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic) returns in the Brahms Violin Concerto, after which Zander leads the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra (Oct. 20). The following concert will belong to British composers and will include Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of Purcell’s Chacony, the Elgar Cello Concerto with the great Alexander Baillie (the English cellist making his eighth appearance with the Boston Phil) and Holst’s awe-filled “The Planets” (Nov. 17).
Zander’s amazing Youth Orchestra will return to Symphony Hall for a concert beginning with Verdi’s thrilling Overture to “La Forza del Destino,” Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony and — a hair-raising Zander specialty — Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” (Nov. 3).
VISITING ARTISTS
Many classical groups, like the BSO, have numerous visiting artists, but some of our most celebrated guests are sponsored under the auspices of independent organizations created for the sole purpose of bringing important guest artists to Boston. Thanks to them — and especially the Celebrity Series of Boston — we’ve had visitors like the Budapest String Quartet, Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, Vladimir Horowitz, the Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic. This fall, the Celebrity Series will be bringing us established favorites and introducing us to individuals or groups who may very well become guests we will continue to cherish. Here are some of the artists and groups coming this fall.
Oct. 10 & 13
This popular and endearing pianist has made more than 30 appearances with the Celebrity Series. As long as you’re not looking for revelations, his skillful, unself-aggrandizing playing can be both satisfying and comforting. His inventive program called “Fantasies” includes works that don’t fit the standard patterns: Beethoven’s two Opus 27 sonatas (No. 2 is the famous “Moonlight”), which are rarely played on the same program; Schumann’s “Arabeske” and magnificent “Fantasie in C Major”; and John Corigliano’s “Fantasia on an Ostinato,” which takes off from a passage in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
Oct. 18
Even if you’re tired of hearing “The Four Seasons,” Vivaldi’s most popular masterpiece, you might find this new arrangement intriguing, with the addition of guest artists Joseph and James Tawadros playing, respectively, oud and riq.
Oct. 25
Schubert’s last three expansive and moving piano sonatas are among the great treasures of the classical repertoire. British pianist and frequent guest Paul Lewis is one of the masters of these sublime works. If you’re looking for revelations, this is your chance.
Nov. 1
This celebrated string quartet offers a program that includes some less familiar works by masters of the form: Haydn’s “Prussian” Quartet (can we ever get enough from the inventor of the string quartet as we know it?), Shostakovich’s dark String Quartet No. 12 and Dvořák’s more comforting G-major Quartet.
Nov. 14
Making their local debut, University of Oxford’s quartet-in-residence has chosen a beautiful and inventive program: Schubert’s “Rosamunde” Quartet, György Kurtág’s Six Moments musicaux, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s rarely heard Five fantasiestücke and Beethoven’s intense (and short) “Serioso” Quartet, Op. 95.
Nov. 20
For some of us, this will be the classical music event of the season. The Berliner Philharmoniker may be the world’s greatest ensemble, and it seems to have found the ideal music director in Kirill Petrenko. They’ll be performing a magnificent work that doesn’t get played as often as it should, Bruckner’s intricately monumental Symphony No. 5. There’s no orchestra one would rather hear in this repertoire, and we should consider ourselves very lucky that the Celebrity Series is sponsoring this return visit.
Nov. 24
Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan make an impressive team. Their latest collaboration includes sonatas written for cello and piano by Brahms and Shostakovich plus two works by these same composers originally composed for different string instruments (Brahms’s gorgeous G-major Sonata, Op. 78, for piano and violin, in these performers’ own transcription) and Shostakovich’s D-minor Sonata for piano and viola.
OPERA & CHORAL MUSIC
Sept. 20-22
Cerise Lim Jacobs’s White Snake Projects — the activist opera company that takes its name from the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera for which Jacobs wrote the libretto — is presenting the world premiere of “Is This America?.” The opera by Mary D. Watkins (who co-wrote the libretto with Jacobs) is about the African American civil rights leader (especially voting rights) Fannie Lou Hamer in the years leading up to the Civil Rights Act. The stage director is Pascale Florestal, the music director is Tianhui Ng and mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel sings the role of Hamer.
Sept. 22-Dec. 1
One might say — and I frequently do — that Emmanuel Music’s Bach cantatas are the spiritual soul of musical life in Boston. Though they are part of the weekly 10 a.m. church service, music lovers are welcome to arrive at 11 a.m. just to hear the cantatas. Music director Ryan Turner leads the group and though most of the cantatas remain relatively unknown, some of them are widely loved. This season’s best-known pieces are “O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort I” (“O Eternity, you word of thunder,” Nov. 10) and “Wachet auf” (“Wake up,” Dec. 1). The illuminating and often profound notes on the cantatas by Craig Smith, Emmanuel Music’s founding music director (with additions by Turner), are themselves worth looking into here.
There’s also an Emmanuel vocal chamber music concert, “Songs of Lost Innocence,” which includes Samuel Barber’s “Dover Beach” (with baritone Will Prapestis), works by Elena Ruehr, Florence Price, Clara Schumann, Kaija Saariaho, composer and tenor Omar Najmi and Fauré’s “La Bonne Chanson,” with soprano Carley DeFranco and pianist Leslie Amper (Oct. 20).
Sept. 27 & 29, Nov. 29-Dec. 1
Founded in 1815, H+H — now under the direction of Jonathan Cohen — opens its fall season with a pair of Requiems, a short one by Michael Haydn (Joseph’s younger brother) and the great and famous (and unfinished) one by Mozart. A fascinating pairing. The period instrument orchestra will be joined by soprano Lucy Crowe, mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor, tenor Duke Kim and bass-baritone Brandon Cedel (Sept. 27 & 29).
In 1818, H+H gave the American premiere of Handel’s “Messiah.” Cohen leads this year’s annual effort with soprano Jeanine De Bique, countertenor Reginald Mobley, tenor Nicholas Phan and baritone Sumner Thompson (Nov. 29-Dec. 1).
Guerilla Opera
Mosesian Center for the Arts, Watertown
Oct. 5
This feisty opera company has in its 17 seasons given us more than 40 world premieres, including some of the best contemporary operas I’ve ever heard. It’s back with a one-night-only staged concert version of its 2009 production of Curtis K. Hughes’s “Say It Ain’t So, Joe” — a “light tragedy” based in part on an actual transcription of the 2008 debate between that year’s two vice-presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. I’m afraid I didn’t like it much at the time, but it got some very good reviews from other critics. The singers this year include members of the original cast: Jennifer Ashe and Aliana de la Guardia as two sides of Sarah Palin plus Diane Sawyer, Amanda Keil as Hillary Clinton and Gwen Ifill, and Brian Church as Joe Biden and Joe “The Plumber” (anyone remember him?).
Oct. 12
Our most consistently exciting opera company and our orchestra most committed to playing 20th- and 21st-century music, both under the direction of Gil Rose, are returning this fall with a one-night-only concert version of two extraordinary Broadway musicals—political satires, no less—with songs by George and Ira Gershwin—some of which you’ve probably heard (“Who Cares?” “Love Is Sweeping the Country”), and some (“Wintergreen for President”) maybe not. “Of Thee I Sing” (the title song goes: “Of thee I sing, baby!”) won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Its sequel, “Let ‘Em Eat Cake” (1933), with its darker satire, didn’t. But neither one is performed very often and I wouldn’t miss this rare opportunity to hear them. Especially both in the same evening. Especially in an election year. The cast features such excellent singing actors as Aaron Engebreth, Heather Buck, and Neal Ferreira.
Nov. 10
The first production of the Boston Lyric Opera’s fall season, a rare performance of Mozart’s early opera “Mitridate,” occurred too early to be included in this preview. BLO’s only other fall performance is a one-night-only concert performance of no less than Verdi’s large-scale, gorgeous and moving “Aida” — one of the great operas dealing with conflicting international loyalties. It’s been a long time since Bostonians have been offered a live performance of this extremely popular work. Music director David Angus leads a young cast that includes in the title role soprano Michelle Johnson, a graduate of the Boston University Opera Institute and the New England Conservatory, who has sung this role at Glimmerglass and numerous companies around the country. Mexican Australian tenor Diego Torre will be Radamès, a role he’s already sung with Opera Australia.
Oct. 25 & Nov. 17
Music Director Noah Horn brings the Cantata Singers to the Cyclorama, one of the great Boston buildings, for a performance of the Monteverdi Vespers as part of the Boston Choral Festival that will include high school choral groups who, we are told, “will have spent the day in immersive workshops” (Oct. 25).
Alison Voth, music director of the Chamber Series, offers a program called “Our Neighbors North and South,” devoted to music by Canadian and Mexican composers: John Greer’s piece for four hands and vocal quartet, “A Prairie Boy’s Life,” plus songs by John Estacio, Daniel Catán, Carlos Chávez and Arturo Márquez (Nov. 17).
SOLO & CHAMBER MUSIC
A Far Cry
Jordan Hall & St. John’s Church, Jamaica Plain
Sept. 21, Oct. 11, Nov. 8 & Dec. 14-15
This conductorless chamber orchestra is one of Boston’s most admired musical groups. This fall, the Criers start out with music about memory — memories of Hungary by Bartók and Holocaust victim László Weiner, and of Taiwan by Shih Hui Chen and Wei-Chieh Lin (Sept. 21). The Criers then bring about-to-be superstar bass-baritone Davóne Tines in a program he co-curated with violinist Megumi Stohs Lewis called “Coded,” focusing on spirituals and the way they have been used in music from Dvořák to a new work by 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winner Tyshawn Sorey (Oct. 11).
Curated by Crier Jae Cosmos Lee, “Last Dance” features dance music (or at least music inspired by dance) by Osvaldo Golijov, Trevor Weston, Dinuk Wijeratne and George Enescu (Nov. 8). And then there’s “Music for the Temple,” a program of music by women — Jessie Montgomery, Caroline Shaw, Nicole Mitchell, Kaija Saariaho (my personal favorite),
Reena Esmail and Jennifer Higdon all inspired by the 20th-century Swedish abstract painter and mystic Hilma af Klint, work she imagined would be displayed in a spiral temple (Dec. 14-15).
Sept. 22-Nov. 24
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s ambitious concert series offers some exciting and intriguing events. The season opens with the Escher String Quartet with guest flutist Brandon Patrick George playing Mozart, Amy Beach and Ginastera, plus Ravel’s ravishing String Quartet and Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio in its original version for string quartet (Sept. 22). Then the group Castle of our Skins, the esteemed “Black arts institution dedicated to fostering cultural curiosity and celebrating Black artistry through music,” pays tribute to the centennial of the birth of African American composer Julia Perry (Sept. 29).
October brings the magnificent Borromeo String Quartet playing Mozart’s devastating G-minor String Quintet with guest violist Paul Neubauer, plus more recent string quartets by Grażyna Bacewicz and Adolphus Hailstork (Oct. 6). The celebrated pianist Awadagin Pratt plays a fascinating program built around Liszt’s phenomenal B-minor Sonata (Oct. 20). And Sphinx Virtuosi, a string orchestra whose players are drawn entirely from the Black and Latinx musical community, returns in a program with percussionist Britton-René Collins including pieces ranging from the 19th-century pianist-composer Teresa Carreño and Scott Joplin to recent works by Derrick Skye, Juantio Becenti and Curtis Stewart (Oct. 27).
November brings a recital by Turkish piano virtuoso Fazil Say (Nov. 17) and a program devoted to inventive 1970s and 1980s minimalist composer Julius Eastman, with choreography by Kyle Marshall (Nov. 24).
Concord Chamber Music Society
Concord Academy Performing Arts Center & Maxwell Auditorium, Lexington
Sept. 22, Nov. 17
This is the 25th anniversary season of CCMS and because this will be the final season for its founding director, violinist Wendy Putnam, you know it will be special. The opening concert will be a program of Beethoven, Schubert and Kati Agócs with the outstanding Jupiter String Quartet (Sept. 22). And the second program should be, if anything, even more special: Putnam herself and another outstanding violinist, Lucia Lin, celebrated violist Kim Kashkashian, cellist Christine Lee and breathtaking virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin in Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello; “Nowhere Fast,” a Piano Quintet by Hamelin completed in 2019; and the marvelous piano quartet “Concordance” by Boston’s beloved Yehudi Wyner, commissioned by CCMS in 2012 (Nov. 17).
Sept. 26 & Nov. 23
Jennifer Montbach’s highly admired Radius Ensemble (in residence at the Longy School of Music of Bard College) is admirably eclectic in its programming. This season’s first concert, “Emerge,” emerges from the summer with a program of pieces that show a composer emerging (like Debussy’s early “Rêverie” and “Arabesque” for oboe and harp) or a whole world emerging, as in Darius Milhaud’s “Creation du Monde” for piano quintet. Two contemporary works are Uruguayan American Miguel del Águila’s “Submerged” for flute, viola and harp, and Valerie Coleman’s “Tzigane” (a response to Ravel’s famous piece of the same name) for wind quintet (Sept. 26).
Radius’s other fall concert is called “Roam,” which might just have been an excuse to prove how eclectic it can be. The music “roams” from French salon to the Armenian genocide, Korean folk songs, and back to Middle European 19th-century classical music. The roaming works are Georges Auric’s Trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon, Mary Kouyoumdjian’s “Dzov Yerku Kooynov (Sea of Two Colors),” Jean Ahn’s “Froggy, Froggy” (viola solo) and Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G minor (Nov. 23).
Sept. 27-29 & Nov. 15-17
This endearing ensemble plays at venues in Cambridge, Lexington and Brattleboro, Vermont, and specializes in both early and contemporary music. Sarasa opens the season with “The Silver Swan,” a program of British and British-inspired music for voice (tenor Jason McStoots), strings and keyboard by Blow, Purcell, Finzi, Vaughan Williams, including the premiere of Sarasa’s own Robert Merfeld’s set of string variations on Orlando Gibbons’s “The Silver Swan” (Sept. 27-29).
Sarasa’s other fall concert, “East-West,” considers the influence of Middle Eastern music on a variety of Baroque and Modern composers including Lully, Rameau, Ali Ufkî Bey, Biber, Bartók, Kodály and Vivaldi (Nov. 15-17).
Sept. 29, Oct. 20 & Nov. 10
Stellar violist Marcus A. Thompson’s Boston Chamber Music Society begins its fall season with a program including a Beethoven piano trio, Lowell Liebermann’s Clarinet Sonata (commissioned in 2021 by BCMS) with Romie de Guise-Langlois, and Fauré’s C-minor Piano Quartet. The superb pianist Max Levinson will be playing in all three works (Sept. 29). The next concert includes the Mendelssohn Sextet, Ives’s Piano Trio (a rare Ives performance in the year celebrating his 150th birthday) and what sounds like a fascinating arrangement for string septet of Mozart’s great Sinfonia Concertante (Oct. 20). And the unusual third fall program consists of a Brahms Scherzo, the Bax Oboe Quartet with the marvelous Peggy Pearson and Kevin Puts’ “And Legions Will Rise” for violin, clarinet and marimba (Nov. 10).
Sept. 29, Oct. 27 & Nov. 17
The Boston Symphony Chamber Players are a group consisting mainly of the orchestra’s principal players. This year will mark the first chamber concerts to include the BSO’s long-awaited new concertmaster, Nathan Cole, and the first program (devoted to American music) will be curated by the first musician to hold the BSO’s new composer chair, Carlos Simon (Sept. 29). Taking no vacation from his weekend performing with the BSO, celebrity pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet will play a demanding chamber program including music by Poulenc, Betsy Jolas and Françaix (Oct. 27). And BSO assistant conductor Samy Rachid and pianist Randall Hodgkinson are part of a program of Britten, Kevin Puts (a new work) and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” (Nov. 17).
Oct. 5
The Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts always has something worthy to offer. This fall’s only concert has violinist Ayano Ninomiya and pianist Pei-Shan Lee playing sonatas by Beethoven and Richard Strauss and Schubert’s big C-major Fantasy.
Oct.7, Nov. 4 & Dec. 2
Curated for 40 years by Laurence Lesser, cellist and former New England Conservatory president, these free Monday concerts include both New England Conservatory students and faculty members. They are usually exceptional programs with exceptional performances. At this time, only dates are listed, without any programs.
Oct. 19
The Lydian String Quartet, in residence at Brandeis University, has a major change: a new first violinist, Clara Lyon. It features one of Haydn’s most magical quartets (the so-called “Bird” Quartet, Op. 33, No. 3), the world premiere of Lydian’s newly commissioned “Juniper and Birch” by Lembit Beecher, and Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 with guest artist Steven Ansell, principal violist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Oct. 19).
Oct. 27
Pro Arte, entering its 47th season, is a chamber ensemble that consists of some of Boston’s finest freelance musicians. Its fall concert, led by visiting conductor Gabriel Lefkowitz — concertmaster and resident conductor of the Louisville Orchestra, features two of the most admired members of the ensemble: clarinetist Ian Greitzer and bassoonist Ron Haroutunian, in Richard Strauss’ Duet Concertino. The other pieces on this unusual program are composer-performer Tanner Porter’s “Canyons” and Joseph Suk’s Serenade for Strings.
Winsor Music
St. Paul’s Church, Brookline
Nov. 30
I’ve loved Winsor Music since it was founded in 1996 by oboist Peggy Pearson, who seems to turn everything she touches to gold. So no surprise that she’s turned it over to such marvelous musicians as violinist Gabriela Díaz and clarinetist Rane Moore. This fall, Winsor has for us a rare treat — a gathering in Boston of three members of the distinguished and disparate Díaz family: violinist Gabriela, violist Roberto and cellist Andrés. They’ll play duets by Mozart and Beethoven, and Beethoven’s C-minor Trio (Nov. 30).
EARLY MUSIC
Boston Baroque
Jordan Hall & GBH Calderwood Studio
Oct. 4-5
For more than half a century, we could count on Martin Pearlman’s Boston Baroque, our first permanent Baroque orchestra, to offer excellent programs on the highest professional level. Pearlman has just announced that this coming season will mark his last as full-time music director. The major fall attraction will be one of the treasures of 18th-century music (1798 to be precise), Haydn’s late masterpiece “The Creation.” Soprano Hera Hyesang Park, tenor Paul Appleby, and bass-baritone Nicholas Newton are the three angels telling the Genesis story, with Newton and Park turning up later as Adam and Eve. Not too shabby music for the chorus as well (Oct. 4-5).
Oct. 6
The joyous Boston Camerata, with Artistic Director Anne Azéma, is celebrating its 70th birthday with “Lands of Pure Delight,” a concert that will not only look back at the music it has performed in its earliest days at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, but will also, as the announcement says, “echo in live music some of the visual treasures of the museum collections, and showcase some of our present-day adventures in sound.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but knowing the Camerata for many of its 70 years, it’s bound to be interesting, informative and fun.
Blue Heron
First Church, Cambridge
Oct. 19
Scott Metcalfe’s terrific medieval vocal ensemble celebrates its 25th birthday with a program called “Something Old, Something New.” The music includes the 16th-century English composer Hugh Aston and Boston composer Mehmet Ali Sanlikol’s “Devran” (2017) plus a new piece written for this occasion.
Oct. 26, Nov. 2 & Nov. 30
If Boston is one of the world centers for early music, that’s a tribute to the Boston Early Music Festival, which for 35 years has been importing to our city some of the most notable international musicians. The BEMF fall season begins with Lionel Meunier’s Vox Luminis in a program it’s calling “Ein Deutsches Barockrequiem” (A German Baroque Requiem), which will consist of earlier musical settings of the startlingly unorthodox biblical texts that Brahms chose to use instead of the traditional texts of the Catholic requiem mass in what he called his “German Requiem” (Oct. 26).
In November, BEMF brings us the Venice Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Andrea Marcon, with guest violinist Chouchane Siranossian in “A Venetian Duel of Bows,” pitting four 18th-century composers of bravura string music — Vivaldi, Tartini, Veracini and Locatelli — against one another in a competition of brilliance (Nov. 2).
BEMF’s Chamber Opera Series, under music directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs and staged by Gilbert Blin, offer something billed as Telemann’s “Don Quichotte,” but as BEMF explains, it’s actually a Telemann serenata about Don Quixote woven through with music from a Telemann suite called “Burlesque de Don Quichotte” (Nov. 30).
And BEMF’s fall season ends with one of its most popular visitors, the British vocal group the Tallis Scholars, in a program called “In dulci Jubilo,” featuring forms of plainchant from the 12th to the 21st century: Hildegard von Bingen to Arvo Pärt (Dec. 6).
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Oct. 6 & Nov. 3
Many musical groups, from the Boston Symphony on down, perform and even commission new music, but Collage New Music — now in its 52nd season — is one of our few institutions devoted exclusively to new music, and it has always been one of the best. This season, Collage welcomes its new music director, Eric Nathan — Collage’s first music director who is also a full-time composer. Nathan’s first concert includes the world premieres of three Collage commissions by Wang Lu, the esteemed John Harbison and Nathan himself, along with music by Vijay Iyer, Juri Seo and — yes! — J.S. Bach (Oct. 6).
The second Collage program is called “I Shall Be Brave: A Celebration in Song.” This vocal program features a stellar cast of singers who are also new-music specialists: sopranos Tony Arnold (Collage’s Artistic Partner) and the legendary Lucy Shelton, and baritone William Sharp, with Seth Knopp on piano — with a chorus of students from Longy’s performance programs. The music will be by Sofia Gubaidulina, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Florence Price, Hildegard von Bingen, Bernard Rands and the Boston premiere of an Emily Dickinson cycle by Nathan (Nov. 3).
