Both violin and piano soloists featured Sept. 16

By Peter Alexander Sept. 12 at 4 p.m.

The Boulder Chamber Orchestra is first out of the gate of the city’s five orchestras that present a season every year.

Their opening concert for the fall of 2023–24, featuring music by Mozart, Beethoven and Dvořák, will be the coming Saturday (Sept. 16 at 8 p.m. at the Boulder Adventist Church; program below) and will feature solo appearances by violinist Jubal Fulks and pianist Petar Klasan. Music director Bahman Saless will conduct.

This is ahead of all other local orchestras—the Boulder Philharmonic, the Boulder Symphony, the Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra and the University Symphony—by two weeks or more.

If there is a theme to the season, it might be the presentation of three different piano concertos by Beethoven by three different soloists: Concerto No. 3 played by Petar Klasan Sept. 16; Concerto No. 2 played by Adam Zukiewicz Oct. 21; and the “Emperor” Concerto played by Jennifer Hayghe in 2024. There is also the usual mixture of very familiar composers (Beethoven! Mozart!) with quirky, unfamiliar composers (Jim Klein and Ian Jamison! Maxim Goulet!) that reflect Saless’ eclectic tastes.

December offers the world premiere of a flute concerto written for the BCO and principal flutist Cobus DuToit by Czech composer Sylvie Bodorova. Compiled from previous works, the concerto was suggested to Saless this past summer when he met Bodorova in a conducting workshop.

The “Romance” in the title of Saturday’s opening concert comes from Dvořák’s Romance in F minor for violin and orchestra. A gently enchanting piece, it was derived from the slow movement of the composer’s String Quartet no. 5 in F minor. The soloist, Jubal Fulks, teachers violin and heads the string area at the University of Northern Colorado.

Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 has a somewhat complicated backstory, having been preceded by two different serenades Mozart wrote for the Haffner family of Salzburg. The first, written for a wedding in 1776, is known today as the “Haffner Serenade.” Portions of the second, commissioned for the ennoblement of Siegmund Haffner in 1782, became Symphony No. 35, first performed in Vienna in 1783.

Beethoven composed his Third Piano Concerto in or around 1800—the exact date is disputed—and gave the first performance on a concert in April 1803 on which he also presented first performances of his Symphony No. 2 in D major and his oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Although the concerto was complete, at least in the composer’s head, he had not yet written it all down. Ignaz von Seyfried, a friend who turned pages at the performance, later reported that almost all the pages were blank! 

“He played nearly all the solo part from memory since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to set it all down on paper,” Seyfried wrote.

With BCO, the soloist will be Croatian pianist Petar Klasan, who fortunately has studied Beethoven’s completed score. A prize winner in several European competitions, Klasan, 21, is a fellow of the International Music Academy in the Principality of Liechtenstein. He currently lives in Vienna, where he continues his studies and performs with “Con Brio,” a concert series that he founded in 2018.

A full listing of the BCO’s 2023–24 season, and access to ticket purchases, can be found on the orchestra’s Web page.

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Boulder Chamber Orchestra
2023 Fall Concert Schedule

“Romance and Intrigue”
Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Bahman Saless, conductor
With Petar Klasan, piano, and Jubal Fulks, violin

• Dvořák: Romance in F minor for violin and orchestra
• Mozart: Symphony No. 35 in D major (“Hefner”)
• Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor

8 pm. Saturday, Sep. 16
Boulder Adventist Church, 345 Mapleton Ave.

“Mozart Mass and  More”
Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Bahman Saless, conductor
Boulder Chamber Chorale, Vicki Burrichter, conductor

• Jim Klein and Ian Jamison: Summation  for choir and orchestra
• Mozart: Mass in C minor

7:30 p.m. Friday Oct. 6
First United Methodist Church, 1421 Spruce, St. Boulder

“Capturing the Folk Spirit”
Mini-Chamber Concert 1
Hsing-sa Hsu, piano, with members of the orchestra

• Bartók: Romanian Folk Songs for violin and piano
• Dvořák: Quintet for piano and strings in A major
• Brahms: Klavietstücke, op. 118 no. 3

7:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 21
Boulder Adventist Church

Holidays Celebration
Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Bahman Saless, conductor
Nadia Artman, guest conductor
With Adam Zukiewicz, piano, and Cobus DuToit, flute

• Mozart: Overture to Marriage of Figaro
• Maxime Goulet: Chocolats Symphonique
• Sylvie Bodorova: Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (2023; world premiere)
• Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, op. 19

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16
Boulder Adventist Church

TICKETS for all concerts available at the Boulder Chamber Orchestra Web site.

NOTE: Correction of spell-corrector errors, 9/12: paragraph 2, the violin soloists name is Jubal Fulks, not Forks; paragraph 4 and penultimate paragraph, the soloists name for the Third Concerto is Petar Klasan, not Peter.