Concerts

PAST CONCERTS:

Chansons Profanes
November 9 & 11, 2012
The Edward M. Pickman Concert Hall at the Longy School of Music

Celebrating anniversaries of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Jean Françaix (1912-97), this concert featured some little-known secular French works from the twentieth century that combined humor and virtuosity.

Click here to see a full list of events throughout the U.S. in honor of of the centennial of Jean Françaix.

A Choral Holiday
December 15, 2012
Old South Church, Copley Square, Boston

For the third annual Choral Holiday, BCE sang repertoire both old and new, including Thompson’s Stopping by woods on a snowy evening, Judith Weir’s My Guardian Angel, and Jan Sandström’s creative re-imagining of Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming. Audiences also enjoyed carols for congregation accompanied by the church’s world-famous organ and selected readings that complemented the program’s theme of snow and roses.

Déplorations
March 8 & 9, 2013
St. Paul’s Church, Cambridge & Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston

The act of deploration, or lament, especially for the death of a loved one, has inspired composers to write some of the most powerfully moving music. This concert began with the famous Deploration on the death of Ockeghem by Josquin. In the first of two main sections we contrasted Tallis’s settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah for men’s voices with Tartini’s setting of the Stabat Mater dolorosa for women’s voices. In the second main section, we highlighted different approaches to text interpretation with settings of When David heard, from the renaissance and from the twentieth century. The concert concluded with the monumental 40-part motet Spem in alium by Tallis (1505-85).