The dynamics in a swirl-stabilized flame is studied using large eddy simulation (LES). We account for the effect of turbulence on the flame through a model based on a filtered flamelet technique. The model provides a consistent and robust reaction-diffusion expression for simulating the correct propagation of premixed flames. The filtered flamelet formulation has been implemented into a high-order-accurate LES code and used to study the flame stabilization and the combustion dynamics in a gas-turbine combustion chamber. The effects of inlet boundary conditions, in terms of velocity and equivalence ratio radial profiles, have been studied. The flow is found to be very sensitive to small changes in terms of flame shapes and anchoring position. The sensitivity of the results to the subgrid-scale flame thickness has also been investigated. The influence on the flame position is not significant. However, a too-large subgridscale flame thickness leads to different flame dynamics.