BSO Announces Free February 16 Symphony Hall Concert And BSO In The Neighborhood Pop-Ups

In response to the Boston Symphony Orchestra's cancellation of its four-city tour to East Asia (Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Shanghai), which was to have taken place February 6-16, the management of the orchestra has added to its performance schedule a series of free musical offerings that will culminate in a Boston Symphony Orchestra community concert, under the direction of Thomas Wilkins, BSO Youth and Family Conductor, on Sunday, February 16, at 3 p.m., at Symphony Hall in Boston.

Leading up to this concert will be a series of free pop-up concerts featuring members of the BSO that will take place throughout Greater Boston, February 9-14. The BSO's East Asia tour was canceled on Thursday, January 30, due to increasing concerns over widely documented official news and government agency reports assessing the spread of the new coronavirus (link to cancellation announcement).

The Thomas Wilkins-led February 16 BSO performance, Concert for Our City, will feature a wide-ranging program including works by Tchaikovsky, Ginastera, and Brahms. The program will also include Chinese composer Huang Ruo's Folksongs for Orchestra, George Walker's Lyric for String Orchestra, and the finale of Dvorák's Cello Concerto with cellist Sterling Elliott, the 2014 winner of the Sphinx Competition. Complimentary general admission tickets can be reserved at www.bso.org/concertforourcity or by calling Symphony Charge at 617-266-1200.

Prior to the February 16 BSO concert, 28 members of the orchestra, along with Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, will participate in pop-up concerts as a way of thanking the orchestra's neighbors. These pop-up concerts will take place in the Yawkey Club of Roxbury Boys & Girls Club, Women's Lunch Place (Boston), Citywide Senior Center (Cambridge), Josiah Quincy School (Boston), New England Center and Home for Veterans (Boston), Horizons for Homeless Children (Roxbury), Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital (Charlestown), Angell Animal Medical Center (Jamaica Plain), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston), and Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building (Roxbury); please note these concerts are not open to the public, but are for the staff working at each location.

In addition, WGBH, WCRB and the BSO host the Boston Symphony Chamber Players up close as they perform masterpieces by Erwin Schulhoff, György Kurtág, and Bohuslav Martinu. Made up of the principal musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Players bring a unique interpretive voice to this seldom heard music in the intimate setting of the Fraser Performance Studio. The musicians will be interviewed on stage by WCRB's Brian McCreath, with opportunities for members of the audience to ask their own questions as well. The Boston Symphony Chamber Players will perform at WGBH's Fraser Performance Studio, on Thursday, February 13, at 7 p.m.; please note there are a limited number of complimentary tickets, available here to the public.

A pop-up concert with members of the BSO will also take place at Tanglewood, free and open to the public on Sunday, February 9, from 3 to 4 p.m., at the Linde Center for Music and Learning; tickets are available at www.bso.org/concertforourcity.

This special series of local pop-up and community concerts is offered through the generous support of Bank of America, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Commonwealth Worldwide Executive Transportation, Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, and Takeda Pharmaceutical International Co. The Boston Symphony Orchestra's Chamber Music Neighborhood Tour is supported with a generous gift from the family of Eleanor L. Campbell in her memory.

When the orchestra returns to Symphony Hall, February 21-25, eminent violinist Pinchas Zukerman conducts the orchestra in a beautifully balanced program, which also features him as soloist in Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3, one of the composer's earliest masterpieces, written when he was 19. The program also includes Strauss' Serenade for Winds; Bruckner's Adagio, the second movement of his String Quintet; and Haydn's Symphony No. 49, which was only previously performed by the BSO twice: in 1979 at Symphony Hall and in 1988 at Tanglewood.

Costa Rican conductor and frequent BSO guest Giancarlo Guerrero returns February 27-March 3 to lead soloist Johannes Moser in the first BSO performances since 1997 of English composer William Walton's Cello Concerto, which Gregor Piatigorsky premiered with the orchestra in 1957 under Charles Munch. Opening the concert is the young British composer Helen Grime's Limina, a BSO commission that was premiered by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra at Tanglewood in 2019. The program also includes French composer Maurice Duruflé's Requiem. Although the piece is frequently performed in Europe and the U.S., its only previous complete BSO performances were in November 1983.

The BSO's Tanglewood Learning Institute winter season in the Berkshires picks up again in February with a number of events, including a screening of Gay Chorus Deep South on February 6 and a Russian-themed TLI TASTE dinner and performance highlighting the work of Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on February 21. In addition to a selection of cold and hot hors d'oeuvres and vodka cocktails, the evening includes piano works by Beethoven and Shostakovich (played by Solzhenitsyn's son Ignat), personal reflections, and a selection of Solzhenitsyn's compelling poems, some of which will be heard in English for the first time. Later in the month, on February 23, a TLI Chamber Music Concert features current and former members of the BSO.

Subscriptions for the BSO's 2019-20 season are available by calling the BSO Subscription Office at 888-266-7575 or online through the BSO's website (www.bso.org/subscriptions). Single tickets ($30-148) may be purchased by phone through SymphonyCharge (617-266-1200 or 888-266-1200), online through the BSO's website (www.bso.org), or in person at the Symphony Hall Box Office (301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston). There is a $6.50 service fee for all tickets purchased online or by phone through SymphonyCharge.

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