Antonín Dvořák’s eighth symphony is often described as cheery, genial, and upbeat. It offers one delightful melody after another, whether evoking themes from Bohemian folk music the composer adored or scenes of local pastoral beauty. As one conductor instructed the orchestra before the fanfare that opens the fourth movement: “Gentlemen, in Bohemia the trumpets never call to battle—they always call to the dance!” Speaking of fanfare, this concert opens with Mason Bates’s Soundcheck in C Major, which is, in his words, “a fanfare animated by sonic effects” that might remind some of Wagner, and others of Pink Floyd.

Themes of love and loss feature strongly in this program featuring mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. First up are a pair of songs Brahms wrote for his friends, the great violinist Joseph Joachim and his wife, Amalie, hoping to bolster their rocky marriage. Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle then depicts the distress of an abandoned woman, evoking memories of happy love, nostalgia, and anguish. Concluding the program, Cooke will sing Hector Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été (“Summer Nights”). Berlioz put six poems about unrequited love to music, creating a song cycle. It’s a musical form Mahler would employ several decades later in his Rückert Lieder, which Cooke will sing in the following concert.