Saturday, March 19, 2022 8pm
All Saints Parish
1773 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA 02445

Please note that masks and proof of vaccination are required for all attendees over 12 years old; masks required for those under 12.

Tickets are $15 general admission, $10 for students and seniors, and free for children 12 & under.
We are almost sold out! A limited number of tickets are still available online, but will not be sold at the door.

Samuel Barber, Cello Concero

Featuring guest soloist, Peter Stumpf

Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. Barber won the Pulitzer Prize twice: in 1958 for his first opera Vanessa, and in 1963 for his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. Barber’s Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 22, was the second of his three concertos (the first being his Violin Concerto and the third his Piano Concerto). Barber was commissioned to write his cello concerto for Raya Garbousova, an expatriate Russian cellist, by Serge Koussevitzky on behalf of Garbusova and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Barber was still on active duty with the U. S. Army at the time he received the commission, and before beginning work asked Garbousova to play through her repertoire for him so that he could understand her particular performing style and the resources of the instrument. Garbousova premiered it with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Symphony Hall, Boston in 1946. The concerto won Barber the New York Music Critics' Circle Award in 1947.

Peter Stumpf is professor of cello at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Prior to his appointment, he was the principal cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 9 years following a 12 year tenure as Associate Principal Cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. At the age of 16, he began his professional career, winning a position in the cello section of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He received a bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and an artist’s diploma from the New England Conservatory of Music.

A dedicated chamber music musician, he is a member of the Weiss-Kaplan-Stumpf Trio and has performed with the chamber music societies of Boston, Philadelphia and the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles, and is a participant at the Marlboro and Santa Fe chamber music festivals. As a member of the Johannes Quartet he collaborated with the Guarneri Quartet on a tour including commissions from composers William Bolcom and Esa Pekka Salonen.

Concerto appearances have included the Boston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and at the Aspen Festival among others. Solo recitals have been at Jordan Hall in Boston, on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series, on the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series in Los Angeles and at the Philips and Corcoran Galleries in Washington D.C. His awards include first prize in the Washington International Competition.

He has served on the cello faculties at the New England Conservatory and the University of Southern California.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor was written between 1804 and 1808, with Beethoven’s first "sketches" following the completion of his Third Symphony. Beethoven repeatedly interrupted his work on the Fifth to prepare other compositions, including the first version of Fidelio, the Appassionata piano sonata, the three Razumovsky string quartets, the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Fourth Symphony, and the Mass in C. Beethoven was in his mid-thirties during this time; his personal life was troubled by increasing deafness. In the world at large, the period was marked by the Napoleonic Wars, political turmoil in Austria, and the occupation of Vienna by Napoleon's troops in 1805.

The final preparation of the Fifth Symphony was carried out in parallel with the Sixth Symphony, which premiered at the same concert. It was first performed in Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1808, and has since become widely considered one of the cornerstones of western music. The defining characteristics of the work focus upon rhythmic vitality, a sense of drama, and imaginative structural details.