Tuesday, March 31, 2026    

Music Director Eckart Preu is joined tonight by two soloists who are PSO members: concertmaster Charles Dimmick and principal cellist Brent Selby. Charles has soloed often with the PSO while Brent is making his first solo appearance tonight. Both enjoy busy careers in and around Boston and have distinguished pedigrees.

Brahms’ Concerto for Violin, Violoncello and Orchestra was last performed by the PSO inMarch, 2018, with violinist Caroline Goulding and cellist Joshua Roman, during what was actually Eckart’s audition concert as one of three finalists for the position of music director here.The piece is Brahms’ last for orchestra, written as a peace offering to violinist and composer Joseph Joachim. Lifelong friends and soulmates, Brahms and Joachim became estranged during Joachim’s divorce. Nonetheless, Joachim played the work’s premiere and several subsequent performances in 1887. Letters between the two men in later years are cordial and indicate that the rift was temporary.

Composer Elena Kats-Chernin was born in the Soviet Union, studied in Australia and Germany, and finally settled in Australia, where she has lived and worked since 1994. Big Rhap premiered in 2017 in Melbourne to enthusiastic receptions. It is a high-energy reminiscence from the composer’s childhood, depicting a lively household in which her mother played a famous piano work by Franz Liszt.

After intermission, the orchestra plays two brief works by Carl Maria von Weber that form the basis for the second movement of the heftier Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber that concludes the program. Paul Hindemith, composer of this work, was a tremendously prolific composer and performer throughout his life, producing music for almost every imaginable combination of instruments. His vogue in the concert hall seems to be somewhat on the wane at present. His music is not warm and fuzzy, but it is great fun to play and to listen to. This work is a treatment of some piano music by Weber. Light-years away from Weber’s originals, it is full of harmonic surprises and colorful orchestration, never lingering too long on any one idea, and building to a rollicking conclusion.

– Martin Webster