MISTRAL, one of Boston’s preeminent chamber music ensembles, now celebrating its 29th season, has announced the return of its popular Valentine concert on Saturday, Feb 7, 4 pm, at West Parish Church, Andover, and on Sunday, Feb 8, 5 pm, at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline.
This year’s program, Mistral Goes to Hollywood, invites you into the vivid crossroads where concert music and cinema meet. With a cast of strings, piano, clarinet, and flute, it will offer chamber works and film scores by composers who moved fluidly between the concert hall and the silver screen, demonstrating how storytelling through music long predated film—and how film, in turn, expanded the expressive reach of classical composition.
The concert opens with John Corigliano’s Red Violin Caprices, a virtuosic solo work drawn from his Academy Award–winning score for The Red Violin. The piece distills the intensity and drama of the film into a compact, technically demanding showcase for the violin. This will be performed by the dynamic longtime Boston Symphony violinist, Lucia Lin.
From there we’ll revel in the magic of John Williams, a composer who has shaped the emotional landscape of modern cinema more profoundly than perhaps any other. Whether evoking the haunting tragedy of Schindler’s List or the inner radiance of Princess Leia, Williams’s themes remind us how deeply a melody can root itself in our collective memory.
The program also honors an earlier lineage of composer-storytellers. Bernard Herrmann, best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, reshaped film music through his bold orchestration and acute psychological insight. The concert features Herrmann’s own string-quartet arrangement of music from Psycho, one of cinema’s most iconic scores. Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev—towering figures of 20th-century concert music—are represented by two of their most recognizable works: Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2 from his Suite for Jazz Orchestra and Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes, both reflecting how these composers brought their distinctive voices to music written alongside—and sometimes for—the world of film.
The program includes the final movement of Nino Rota’s Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano, a brisk, high-spirited piece that showcases his cleverness and irrepressible sense of play. Known worldwide for his film scores, including those for Federico Fellini and Francis Ford Coppola, an arrangement from the acclaimed film Amarcord will also be offered. Its nostalgic themes evoke memory, childhood, and the passage of time.
The concert concludes with a look at the continuing evolution of film music. John Kusiak’s Film Noir is a contemporary composer’s homage to a genre defined by shadow and restraint, while Ennio Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso—presented as a programmed encore—serves as a poignant reminder of music’s ability to convey emotion beyond words or images.
For Shorter Calendar Listings:
Saturday, Feb. 7, 4 pm, Andover, West Parish Church
Sunday, Feb. 8, 5 pm, Brookline, Saint Paul’s Church
Tickets $40/$35 if part of a subscription series of three or more concerts. Student tickets are free at the door: Contact us about group and family discounts. Order securely online at www.MISTRALMUSIC.org or call 978-474-6222 or contact Darby Clinard: Sales@MistralMusic.org
MISTRAL has been bringing “unstuffy, unpredictable, and unmatched” concerts with internationally renowned musicians to the Merrimack Valley and Greater Boston area since 1997. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Julie Scolnik, Mistral performances are always a little eccentric, stubbornly personal, impassioned, and committed to invigorating old traditions with an ever-youthful perspective. The Mistral 2025-26 concert season is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and by the Hamilton Company Charitable Foundation.