Upcoming Concerts & Performances
7 upcoming concerts and performances from Handel and Haydn Society, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All classical in Greater Boston →
Fri Nov 27 – Sun Nov 29
Fri Nov 27 · 7:30pm / Sat Nov 28 · 3pm / Sun Nov 29 · 3pm
The Society's 173rd consecutive Messiah, led by its conductor laureate Harry Christophers, with the soprano Hilary Cronin and the countertenor Christopher Lowrey, played on period instruments as the orchestra always plays it. The Boston Globe called the annual performance "a holiday ritual as essential as trimming the tree."
Dec 17/20 · 7:30pm/2pm
Thu Dec 17 · 7:30pm / Sun Dec 20 · 2pm
Jonathan Cohen conducts the period-instrument orchestra and chorus in Schütz's Christmas Story, a setting of the nativity narrative written more than a century before Handel's Messiah, together with the motet Hodie Christus natus est. Four performances across the week before Christmas.
Fri Jan 29 – Sat Jan 30 · 7:30pm
Fri Jan 29 / Sat Jan 30 · 7:30pm
Damien Geter's Baroque-inspired cantata Kiss and Tell, to a libretto by Tsitsi Jaji, receives its first performance, co-commissioned with the Cleveland early-music ensemble Les Délices and drawing on myths from several cultures. Jonathan Cohen conducts, with the countertenor Reginald Mobley; Handel's cantata Vedendo amor shares the programme.
Feb 19/21 · 7:30pm/3pm
Fri Feb 19 · 7:30pm / Sun Feb 21 · 3pm
Rachel Podger returns to direct all six Brandenburg Concertos from the violin. Bach assembled the set in 1721 as a presentation copy for the Margrave of Brandenburg, scoring each for a different combination of instruments. The Boston Musical Intelligencer credited the orchestra's Bach with "a casual Baroque swagger".
Fri Mar 19 – Sat Mar 20 · 7:30pm/3pm
Fri Mar 19 · 7:30pm / Sat Mar 20 · 3pm
Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts the Fifth Symphony two hundred years after Beethoven's death. The orchestra plays it on gut strings and valveless brass, a balance quite different from the one the modern symphony orchestra has standardised. Zeitouni conducts, and the programme is built around the symphony rather than pairing it with a concerto.
Apr 2/4 · 7:30pm/3pm
Fri Apr 2 · 7:30pm / Sun Apr 4 · 3pm
Nicolas Altstaedt is the soloist in Haydn's C major Cello Concerto, a work lost for a century and a half until a set of parts turned up in Prague in 1961. Jonathan Cohen directs the period-instrument orchestra from the front.
Sat May 1 – Sun May 2 · 2pm/3pm
Sat May 1 · 2pm / Sun May 2 · 3pm
Mendelssohn's Elijah, first heard in Birmingham in 1846 and sung there in English, given by the period-instrument orchestra and chorus. This performance also brings back CitySing, in which community singers who have rehearsed the work join the professionals onstage for part of it.
