Program Nine • An Evening with the Orchestra

Program Nine offers the chance to hear two little-known Romantic symphonies, both overdue for restoration to the canon.

After studying with Reicha at the Paris Conservatoire, Louise Farrenc went on to become the only female professor hired there in the 19th century. Like Berlioz, who admired her orchestration, she was one of the few to write symphonies in Paris when they were far from fashionable. Unlike his contributions to the genre, however, her masterly Third Symphony is traditional in design and Germanic in its influences. So, too, are the works of German-Swiss composer Joseph Joachim Raff, heralded as one of the leading symphonists of his day.

Forming the third part of his “seasons” cycle, Raff’s Tenth Symphony, “In Autumn,” follows a program inspired by nature and folklore, and has prompted comparisons with Schumann and Mendelssohn. These substantive Romantic rarities share the program with Rossini’s programmatic William Tell Overture, a longtime audience favorite and one of the few examples of his work to impress Berlioz, and the French composer’s own Waverley Overture, an early composition inspired by the novels of Walter Scott.