The Harvard Bach Society Orchestra Opens Its Season with Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Haydn

By John M. Kipp

Initial sketch for the theme of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, found in a letter dated August 7, 1829 . Original in the Music Division of the New York Public Library

On the morning of October 11th, the Harvard Bach Society Orchestra performed its first concert of the academic year in Paine Hall, playing before a full house.

The orchestra opened the concert with Felix Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides Overture. Mendelssohn composed the piece at just twenty-one years old, inspired by a tour of Scotland in 1829. During a visit to the Scottish Inner Hebrides—a group of islands off the country’s western coast—he spent a day on the isle of Staffa, an 82-acre island known for its hexagonal basalt columns formed by ancient lava flows. Staffa is also home to a sea cave said to have once been the castle of the third-century warrior-bard Ossian.

Mendelssohn described his visit in a letter to his sister, enclosing a scrap of music with the note that the theme had entered his mind while on the island. A year later, he developed that motif into a full orchestral work. Assistant Music Director Moshi Tang conducted the overture with great energy, directing the sudden swells and calm passages with precision and expression. The audience responded with thunderous applause.

The orchestra then invited sophomore Preston McNulty Socha and the Harvard Glee Club to join them for a performance of Johannes Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody. Brahms composed the piece in 1869 as a wedding gift for a friend’s daughter, setting to music three verses from Goethe’s 1777 poem “Winter Journey in the Harz.”

Mr. McNulty Socha carried the melody through the first two sections of the piece with warmth and control while the orchestra provided a rich, balanced accompaniment. For the climactic final section, the men’s chorus entered, their voices blending with the orchestra to fill the hall with Brahms’s soothing, hymn-like melody. Mr. McNulty Socha received multiple ovations as the audience applauded his performance.

The orchestra closed the evening with a performance of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 104, his final symphony. Haydn composed the work in 1795 while living in London, and it premiered that same year at the King’s Theatre. Music Director Enoch Li conducted with his characteristic enthusiasm and dynamic style throughout the half-hour performance, maintaining tight coordination and expressive phrasing across all four movements. The audience again responded with warm, sustained applause as Li brought his baton down on the final beat.

The evening was a triumphant start to the Bach Society Orchestra’s concert season. With poised soloists, strong ensemble work, and energetic conducting, the performance showcased the orchestra’s musical maturity and its ability to bring both technical precision and emotional depth to some of the great works of the classical repertoire.