The Grant Park Music Festival, which takes place in Millennium Park with Chicago’s dramatic skyline as a backdrop, runs eight weeks instead of the usual ten this year, and music director Carlos Kalmar has put the same emphasis on new and adventuresome works as he has in recent years. Among the highlights is the debut […]
Cellist Camille Thomas makes her National Symphony Orchestra debut playing Elgar’s Cello Concerto under the baton of Gustavo Gimeno. In a Nov. 2-4 program that concludes with Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, the orchestra will also give the East Coast premiere of Pasajes, a work written as part of the Amplifying Voices project by Tania León. https://www.kennedy-center.org/nso/home/2023-2024/gimeno-thomas/ […]
Bass-baritone David Wadden makes his debut with Pacific Northwest Opera on Nov. 3-12 in The Marriage of Figaro, part of PNO’s all-Mozart season. With Jonathan Khuner conducting this production by Mitchell Kahn, the cast includes Katie van Kooten as the Countess, Hallie Schmidt as Susanna, and Jeremy Harr as Figaro. https://pnopera.org/
Making her London Philharmonic debut on Dec. 6, conductor Tianyi Lu, winner of the 2020 Sir Georg Solti Conductors’ Competition, takes on a classic: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade. Pianist Tom Borrow will be on hand to play Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, the Emperor. https://lpo.org.uk/event/scheherazade/
Robin Ticciati, chief conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, makes his conducting debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Dec. 7-9, tackling Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with soprano Elsa Benoit. The program opens with Dvořák’s The Noon Witch followed by Ondřej Adámek’s Sinuous Voices. https://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/en/concerts/calendar/details/55039/
Two artists are making their Minnesota Orchestra debuts on Feb. 9-10: saxophonist Steven Banks and conductor Ruth Reinhardt. Banks will be the soloist for Billy Child’s Diaspora. Also on the roster are “Šárka,” from Smetana’s Má vlast, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet suite. https://www.minnesotaorchestra.org/tickets/calendar/classical/prokofievs-romeo-and-juliet/
Mexican conductor Iván López-Reynoso makes his U.S. symphonic debut on Feb. 9-10, leading the Milwaukee Symphony in the Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Pianist Jorge Federico Osorio will play Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto in a program that opens with a suite from the 1936 film Redes (“Nets”) by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. https://www.mso.org/concerts/pictures-at-an-exhibition/
Eun Sun Kim, music director of the San Francisco Opera, makes her debut with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Feb. 15-17. She will conduct Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as well as two works featuring pianist Louis Lortie: Mozart’s Rondo, K. 382, and Fauré’s Ballade, Op. 19. https://www.osm.ca/en/concerts/mozart-and-faure-with-louis-lortie-and-eun-sun-kim/
Recently named the next music director of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, Klaus Mäkelä is making his Carnegie Hall debut on March 16, conducting an all-Stravinsky program with the Orchestre de Paris. On the docket are two complete ballets: The Firebird and The Rite of Spring. https://www.carnegiehall.org/calendar/2024/03/16/orchestre-de-paris-0800pm
Quatuor Van Kuijk, from France, makes their Carnegie Hall debut on March 21 with the U.S. premiere of the jazz-inspired Ces messieurs by fellow Frenchman Baptiste Trotignon. The concert opens intensely, with Beethoven’s late quartet, Op. 131 in C-sharp minor. Several works by Fauré and Satie are also on the program. https://www.carnegiehall.org/calendar/2024/03/21/quatuor-van-kuijk-0730pm
The 2023-24 season marks the inaugural year of Jonathon Heyward as music director of the Baltimore Symphony. One of the promising highlights of his debut season is the programming of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 on March 21-24. There are few works that so thoroughly test what a conductor is made of. https://my.bsomusic.org/overview/18298
Pianist Yuja Wang debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra on March 29-30, playing Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto. The program, conducted by Hannu Lintu opens with Saariaho’s Ciel d’hiver and closes with Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 https://www.minnesotaorchestra.org/tickets/calendar/classical/yuja-wang-plays-bartok/
In 2022 Michelle Cann won the Sphinx Medal of Excellence. The brilliant pianist will make her Indianapolis Symphony debut on April 4, playing Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto. ISO assistant conductor Su-Han Yang conducts Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3. https://www.indianapolissymphony.org/event/tchaikovsky-1st-piano-concerto/
On April 4-6, two artists will make their debuts with the National Symphony: conductor Bernard Labadie and bass-baritone Michael Sumuel. Soprano Joèlle Harvey and the Washington Chorus for Fauré’s Requiem. The program opens with Symphony No. 4 by Henri-Joseph Rigel, written in 1774, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 31, Paris, composed four years later. https://www.kennedy-center.org/nso/home/2023-2024/labadie-faure/
