Gardner Museum's Fall Concert Series to Feature 10 Shows at Calderwood Hall

 

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will present its Fall 2026 Weekend Concert Series, a ten-concert autumn season curated by Abrams Curator of Music George Steel held on select Sundays at 1:30pm from September 13 through November 22, 2026. The season features world-class artists performing in the Museum's extraordinary Calderwood Hall—a 300-seat “sonic cube” with three levels of balconies designed so that 80% of seats are front row, creating a uniquely intense and intentional listening experience.

The Gardner Museum's Fall Weekend Concert Series includes: violinist Rachel Barton Pine performing a recital of Brahms sonatas (September 13); acclaimed period-instrumentalist, violinist Rachell Ellen Wong, making her Calderwood Hall debut with collaborators from her Twelfth Night Ensemble (September 20; postponed from January due to the blizzard); a chamber music celebration honoring the late Scott Nickrenz, former Abrams Curator of Music at the Gardner, featuring Geneva Lewis and YooJin Jan, violins; Emma Wernig, viola; Jay Campbell, cello; and Conrad Tao, piano (September 27); the excellent Ivalas Quartet with music by Franz Schubert, George Walker, and Carlos Simon (October 4); Esther in the Age of Rembrandt performed by ACRONYM, in conjunction with the Gardner Museum's exhibition (October 18); Celebrating Chrysanthemums, an exploration of the chrysanthemum as muse coinciding with the Museum's annual John Lowell Gardner Chrysanthemum Installation (October 25); Jamaican-British composer and pianist Eleanor Alberga with the Green Room Ensemble (November 1); the multiple prize-winning Poiesis Quartet (November 8); the Lysander Piano Trio in a wide ranging program spanning from Swedish violinist and composer Amanda Maier to South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen (November 15); and superstar harpsichordist Jean Rondeau in a survey of French Baroque music (November 22).

George Steel's music programming for the Museum continues founder and legendary arts patron Isabella Stewart Gardner's vision of bringing together musicians and audiences for inspiring gatherings. Dating to 1927, the Gardner's Weekend Concert Series is the longest-running museum music program in the country. Much like Isabella Stewart Gardner did in her time, Steel champions unknown repertoire and embraces new works, creates connections and builds community among musicians, and supports them by presenting them in new endeavors and collaborations. His programming also frequently draws on the history of the Gardner Museum, featuring instruments from the Museum's collection and music by composers who were associated with its founder. In honoring Isabella Stewart Gardner's musical legacy, Music at the Gardner remains strongly committed to broadening the repertoire of music presented to include previously overlooked and marginalized composers as well as performers of all backgrounds.

Fall 2026 Weekend Concert Series Overview

Acclaimed violinist Rachel Barton Pine, praised by The New York Times for her “bravura technique and soulful musicianship,” opens the Gardner Museum's 2026 Fall Weekend Concert Series on Sunday, September 13, returning to Calderwood Hall after her triumphant concert last season. Joined by pianist Matthew Hagle, she presents a recital of Johannes Brahms's violin sonatas — including Brahms's own violin version of a sonata better known on clarinet, which Pine has been championing. She performs on the astonishing Guarneri "del Gesù" violin that Brahms himself selected for his chamber music partner, Marie Soldat-Roeger.

The long-awaited Boston debut of Twelfth Night Ensemble follows on Sunday, September 20, in a program postponed from January due to the blizzard. Violinist Rachell Ellen Wong—the only Baroque violinist to be awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant—joins harpsichordist David Belkovski and cellist Coleman Itzkoff in Baroque works by Nicola Matteis, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, John Eccles, Giuseppe Tartini, J.S. Bach, Jean-Marie Leclair, Francesco Maria Veracini, Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer, and Jacques Duphly, alongside contemporary composer Wanessa Dourado's Conto Bachiano from 2023. Inspired by Shakespeare's play of the same name, Twelfth Night strives to invoke a spirit of boundless revelry, celebration, and community in their programming.

A new annual tradition begins on Sunday, September 27, with the inaugural Chamber Music Celebration, endowed to honor the life and work of the late Scott Nickrenz, the Gardner's first Abrams Curator of Music and a superb violist and chamber music impresario and evangelist. Violinists Geneva Lewis and YooJin Jang, violist Emma Wernig, cellist Jay Campbell, and pianist Conrad Tao present a wide-ranging program featuring music by Henry Purcell and Franz Joseph Haydn, Ruth Crawford Seeger's Suite No. 2 for Four Strings and Piano, and crowned by the thrilling Piano Quintet of Ukrainian-American composer Leo Ornstein, whose life bridged three centuries.

Franz Schubert's monumental “Death and the Maiden” quartet anchors the Ivalas Quartet's program on Sunday, October 4, paired with two American works: an early piece in George Walker's "American" style (Walker died only a few years ago at age 96) and An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave, a moving miniature by Carlos Simon, whose Requiem for the Enslaved had its Boston premiere at the Gardner Museum in 2022. Hailed by The Strad for playing with “tremendous heart and beauty,” the Ivalas Quartet has been changing the face of classical music since its inception in 2017 with a mission to enrich the classical music world by spotlighting past and present BIPOC composers alongside the standard repertory.

In conjunction with the Museum's exhibition, ACRONYM presents Esther in the Age of Rembrandt on Sunday, October 18, offering rare performances of three Esther cantatas written during Rembrandt's time. The program includes a work by the remarkable French composer Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, alongside music by Flemish composer Leonora Duarte, Jewish Mantuan composer Salamone Rossi, Giacomo Carissimi, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. ACRONYM will perform with a roster of vocal soloists as special guests: Amanda Forsythe and Teresa Wakim, sopranos; Kim Leeds, alto; Aaron Sheehan, tenor; and Jesse Blumberg, baritone.

The Gardner Museum's annual John Lowell Gardner Chrysanthemum Installation inspires Celebrating Chrysanthemums on Sunday, October 25, an exploration of the flower as artistic muse hosted by the Gardner's Stanley P. Kozak Director of Horticulture Erika Rumbley and Abrams Curator of Music George Steel, who will also read related poems, letters, and horticultural texts. An all-star cast performs music by Jules Massenet, Léo Delibes, Giacomo Puccini, Scott Joplin, Dora Pejačević, Nikolai Harito, William Penn, Zbigniew Maciejowski, Ernesto Lecuona, Tōru Takemitsu, Xiaogang Ye, and Juantio Becenti.

Jamaican-British composer and pianist Eleanor Alberga, one of the most exciting composers writing in the U.K., takes the stage on Sunday, November 1 with the Green Room Ensemble — violinists Thomas Bowes and Nathan Meltzer, violist Jordan Bak, and cellist Sterling Elliott, who are all stars in their own right. The concert is part of the world premiere tour of Alberga's Piano Quintet No. 2, “Stark” and will also include her String Quartets Nos. 1, 2, and 3. Alberga has been commissioned by the BBC Proms, The Royal Opera, and Covent Garden, among many others.

Founded only in 2022, the Poiesis Quartet has already become a much-talked-about force in classical music. On Sunday, November 8, they tackle two landmarks of the repertoire—Ludwig van Beethoven's final string quartet (a work full of good humor despite having been written in trying circumstances) and Sergei Prokofiev's String Quartet No. 1. They also bring two recent works: Many Many Cadences, a bright and brilliant work by Sky Macklay, and Tapestry of the Beloved Beatified, a new commission from Jeff Scott, founding horn player of Imani Winds. The Poiesis Quartet was named among the best classical performances of 2025 by The New York Times.

Formed while its members were students at Juilliard, the Lysander Piano Trio performs on Sunday, November 15, featuring music by the remarkable Swedish violinist-composer Amanda Maier, who knew and worked with Brahms and Edvard Grieg. The program also includes works by Grieg and Antonín Dvořák, and Two Nguni Dances by South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, whom the Museum has commissioned in the past, and whose sophisticated style draws on sub-Saharan musical traditions, including those of the Xhosa clan, to which he belongs. The Lysander Piano Trio has been praised by The Washington Post for playing with, “an uncommon degree of heart-on-the-sleeve emotional frankness.”

The Gardner Museum's Fall 2026 Weekend Concert Series concludes on Sunday, November 22 with superstar harpsichordist Jean Rondeau—perhaps the world's most celebrated performer on the instrument—returning to Calderwood Hall for a survey of French Baroque treasures by Louis Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Couperin, and Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer. Rondeau is a global ambassador for the harpsichord, and is at the forefront of bringing the instrument into the 21st century. The Washington Post raves, “He internalizes the music he plays so completely that any interpretive ambivalence or miscalculation is unthinkable. The sincerity and modesty of his delivery are the keys to its power.”

Fall 2026 At-a-Glance Concert Schedule

September 13 Rachel Barton Pine, violin
September 20: Twelfth Night Ensemble
September 27: Chamber Music Celebration: This annual concert celebrates the life and legacy of Scott Nickrenz, first Abrams Curator of Music at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
October 4: Ivalas Quartet
October 18: ACRONYM: Esther in the Age of Rembrandt
October 25: Celebrating Chrysanthemums: This performance is made possible by the Anne Hawley Fund for Programs.
November 1: Eleanor Alberga with Green Room Ensemble
November 8: Poiesis Quartet
November 15: Lysander Piano Trio
November 22: Jean Rondeau, harpsichord

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