Sunday, June 28, 2026
7:00 PM
On WCRB In Concert with the Boston Festival Orchestra, the BFO launches their fifth anniversary Summer Stage celebration with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Complementing this masterpiece is Dorothy Chang’s Skizzen (2020), a work that reimagines the Fifth Symphony's iconic four-note motif, weaving it into a dynamic and innovative soundscape. The program also features "Swept Away," a violin concerto composed by BFO Artistic Director Alyssa Wang, in reflection of her late father’s battle with cancer.
Boston Festival Orchestra
Alyssa Wang, Artistic Director & conductor
Jae Cosmos Lee, violin
Dorothy CHANG Skizzen
Alyssa WANG Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orchestra, "Swept Away"
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5
This concert was recorded on July 13, 2025 at NEC's Jordan Hall.
Learn more about the Boston Festival Orchestra's 6th Summer Stage season.
Artistic Director Alyssa Wang and Executive Director Nicholas Brown spoke with CRB's Edyn-Mae Stevenson about the Boston Festival Orchestra's tenuous beginnings, the "highly personal" celebration of their fifth anniversary, and the exciting concerts ahead in their sixth Summer Stage Season.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
Edyn-Mae Stevenson I'm Edyn-Mae Stevenson from WCRB and I'm here with Executive Director Nicholas Brown and Artistic Director Alyssa Wang of Boston Festival Orchestra. Thank you guys so much for being here.
Alyssa Wang Hi!
Nicholas Brown Hey, thank you.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson I know it's a little bit past us at this point, but I did want to say congratulations on five seasons and now an upcoming sixth season.
Alyssa Wang Thank you!
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Looking back on five seasons, it is easy to forget now, but six years ago, life looked a little different. It was a really scary time to be a musician. What possesses someone to start an orchestra in the middle of a global pandemic? [Wang laughs]
Alyssa Wang Oh gosh. I mean, Nick and I were classmates at New England Conservatory and we wanted to start something, and it got derailed in the most unexpected way because of COVID. So, I guess we already had plans to do it. And the question was whether or not we were gonna let COVID-19 prevent those plans from happening or [Wang laughs] actually go through with them.
Nicholas Brown Yeah, and as a matter of fact, in hindsight, it ended up really helping us formulate the plan and the vision for the BFO, just because it gave us more time to talk about what it actually looked like, for us to understand what it really meant to create something like this and the impact that it could have. And so in a way, it really reinforced the idea that we wanted to do it.
Alyssa Wang Yeah, sometimes if you have the roadblock, then suddenly you realize how badly you want something to happen. [Wang chuckles] So it gave us that push.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Yeah, absolutely. How does this season feel different from when you started? Obviously, it's a very, very different time.
Nicholas Brown Yeah. Well, something that we like to do is continue to outdo ourselves, right? We always think about what did season one look like compared to two, and then two to three? And so this year, it feels like we continue to build on all the foundations that work and then add something else that, again, tries to outdo ourselves—this year being a chorus, which is our first concert on July 11th partnering with Chorus Pro Musica to bring the Boston premiere of Christopher Tin's The Drop That Contained the Sea, which is a full evening length work. It's ten movements. It's seven vocal soloists, the chorus, the orchestra, and it really…
Alyssa Wang Ten languages!
Nicholas Brown Ten different languages, yeah.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Wow.
Nicholas Brown So that for sure looks different than anything that we've done before. [Brown chuckles]
Edyn-Mae Stevenson So, this concert that we're going to be hearing and airing was the start of your fifth season, the opening of your fifth season. Talk to me about why you chose Beethoven's Fifth [Symphony] for that.
Alyssa Wang Yes, there were a lot of reasons why we wanted to do that. I mean, I had been playing a sort of cheesy numbers game a little bit. It started kind of by accident, and then the pattern emerged. And so, our first season we did Prokofiev’s First Symphony, and then second season we did Beethoven’s Second. Third season, we did Mendelssohn’s Third. So, the significance of five—not only in the history of composition, that being a significant symphony number for many composers, you know, beyond just that, it was also a significant anniversary for us. So, we thought, hey, we're a new group. We started in extremely tenuous circumstances. Let's do something that really shows the audiences what we can do, and that we made it to year five.
So, we wanted to pair a classic symphony that had that gravitas, and there's nothing that's more classic and there's nothing more famous really than Beethoven's Fifth. And to pair it with a first half that totally contrasts it and in some ways complements it… That kind of combination of pieces is really, I think, a signature of the BFO and what we do. So, to conduct Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is—I think we all know it, but we sort of maybe forget how difficult it is. It's one of the hardest symphonies to conduct ever that I've ever experienced.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Yeah! [Stevenson chuckles]
Alyssa Wang And I think a lot of conductors would agree with me. And it's extremely difficult to play partly because everybody knows it and knows how it goes. So, I really wanted the musicians who were so fantastic to do an incredible rendition of Beethoven Five, and they really did. I'm so proud of them and it came out great.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson And then you made the decision to pair it with Dorothy Chang’s Skizzen, which I thought was very fitting knowing that it was written in 2020 when you began the orchestra.
Alyssa Wang That’s right.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson But also it's sort of a companion piece. Could you explain to the listener why Skizzen belongs with Beethoven's Fifth?
Alyssa Wang She wrote it as a companion piece to Beethoven's Fifth. And there are a lot of different ways composers tackle the idea of a companion piece and sometimes it's more like a philosophical companion piece, but in her case, she took the famous [Wang sings the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth] motive and she very obviously integrated it into like every single measure of this piece. It's really modern sounding, but you hear very obviously the Beethoven Five references, and I just fell in love with it the first time I heard it. So, that was the main impetus for that.
And then the Violin Concerto, which was the second piece on the program which our concertmaster Jae Cosmos Lee is performing, was something I wrote a couple of years after the pandemic. It was in honor of my father who passed away from cancer and kind of my musical response to that tragedy, and trying to send that message much like Beethoven's Fifth where you start in a really dark place and you end in a much more hopeful, much more celebratory place. My concerto also follows that journey from loss to hope and going back out into the world again.
Nicholas Brown Yeah, and I think this program really captures the ethos of the BFO. It's a highly personal journey for Alyssa and myself, of course, but connecting with people through the types of music and live performance that they also kind of connect with in their own way. Beethoven Five, as Alyssa was saying, everybody knows at least the opening of it. And sometimes it's fun to just play the opening for people who know it, but have never heard the rest of it, and say, oh right, there's another 45 minutes of music, right? [Wang laughs] Or however long that happens. And then being able to pair that with Alyssa's work which had never been heard in Boston at the time with Jae… It really came together in such an amazing way, and it was really such a privilege to put on that program.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson How did it feel–because I understand that you played the premiere of your concerto.
Alyssa Wang That's right, yes.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson How does it feel to conduct it and have someone else playing it?
Alyssa Wang It was the most surreal experience! That was my first time conducting my own piece.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Oh wow.
Alyssa Wang So, you're right, I had performed it several times. I did the premiere. So I knew it from a violin perspective, but it was so amazing getting to not only have the BFO of all orchestras play it, but to have my good friend Jae play it too and to actually be able to shape the arc of the concerto myself. And obviously, I know what that arc is and I know what I want because I wrote it. So, in many ways, it was the most full realization of the concerto that has happened to date. And I just am so grateful that everybody embraced it and they were really excited to play it and they really sold it. They got the message of it. So, it was just an incredible experience.
Nicholas Brown And the audience loved it! [Everyone chuckles]
Edyn-Mae Stevenson I'm sure our listeners are gonna love it too. And so, of course, your Summer Stage season six is about to start and you've already teased a little bit of what that is. What else do we have to look forward to?
Nicholas Brown Yeah, so I already mentioned the July 11th concert with Christopher Tins, The Drop That Contained the Sea. And then we are especially excited for our second concert on Sunday, July 26th. We'll be presenting Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, Double Concerto for violin and viola, and we'll also be presenting Bruckner's 6th Symphony. So while we talked about getting away from the cheesy numerology, we're actually sticking with it. [Brown laughs]
Alyssa Wang We’re sticking with it! [Wang laughs]
Nicholas Brown Season Six, Bruckner's Sixth. This will be our first ever Bruckner Symphony as the Boston Festival Orchestra. Our first time performing a double concerto as well. And that is in partnership with Morningside Music Bridge, who are amazing partners as well: an international music school that's housed at New England Conservatory over the summer and that paired with our MusicReach program, which is smaller community events with partners throughout Greater Boston where we're just sending a few musicians to connect with people, to perform, to chat, and you know, just spread some music.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Well, that's so exciting. I can't wait for season six and thank you guys so much for being here.
Alyssa Wang Thank you!
Nicholas Brown Thank you.