andrey boreyko

Marsalis headlines CSO's next season

Publication: Cincinnati.com
Author: Janelle Gelfand
Date: January 27, 2012

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will continue its unprecedented artistic leadership arrangement in its 2012-13 season, in which a trio of musical giants will oversee its programs. Former Tonight Show bandleader Branford Marsalis and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon will join conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos as creative directors, each leading their own series.

And making her overdue Cincinnati debut, opera diva Renée Fleming will perform a gala opening concert to launch the season on Sept. 18.

Next season will be the orchestra’s last in Music Hall before the 138-year-old building undergoes a 16-month revitalization. In addition, the orchestra continues its search for a new music director. The 117th season will bring back music director laureate Paavo Järvi, who conducts in January for the first time since his tenure ended with a sold-out concert last May 2013.

Concertgoers can expect a starry lineup of guest artists, including renowned violinists Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham and Sarah Chang; pianists André Watts, Yefim Bronfman and Garrick Ohlsson and the virtuoso Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Profoundly deaf since age 12, she “hears” music with her whole body.

Legendary violinist Pinchas Zukerman will perform double duty, conducting and performing music by Beethoven, Schoenberg and Mendelssohn, when he returns in February 2013.

Among the premieres, the season has Higdon’s “All Things Majestic,” a multimedia performance accompanied by historic images of Music Hall and Cincinnati in celebration of the city’s 225th anniversary. Other premieres are a newly commissioned work by Chinese-American composer Zhou Tian, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker’s Sinfonia No. 4, Strands, a CSO co-commission.

Spanish maestro Frühbeck will also conduct Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, the Cincinnati Boychoir and the Women of the May Festival Chorus (Oct. 4 and 6).

Several maestros – and a maestra – who have made an impression have been invited back next season.

In the Masterworks Series, French conductor Louis Langrée will return for a pair of weekends in November. The first will include Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring rising talent Cédric Tiberghien, and Franck’s Symphony in D Minor. A second program will pair Schoenberg’s “A Survivor from Warsaw” with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, “Choral.”

Italian maestro Roberto Abbado will return in April to lead Strauss’ “Alpine” Symphony and Mozart’s glorious Piano Concerto No. 24 with pianist Lars Vogt (April 12-13 2013).

Marsalis, saxophonist, bandleader and member of the famed New Orleans family of jazz, will direct the five-concert Ascent Series. He will also appear as alto saxophone soloist in the “Tallahatchie Concerto” by Jacob Ter Veldhuis, a high-intensity piece to be conducted by Andrey Boreyko (Nov. 30-Dec. 1). Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on January 30th, 2012 — 11:35am

Pratfalls From Haydn, Swing From Marsalis

Publication: New York Times
Author: Steve Smith
Date: February 18, 2011

Taken at face value, the program that the New York Philharmonic presented on Wednesday evening in Avery Fisher Hall was a curious clutch of disparate works. Still, there was symmetry to the arrangement: two saxophone showcases played with an estimable soloist, Branford Marsalis, both also heard during a Philharmonic concert in Central Park last summer, flanked here by pieces that repurposed viable music from forgotten stage dramas.

There were lessons to be learned from the event. One, obviously, was that any good music can survive the specifics of its provenance.

Read more »

Submitted by Bobby on February 28th, 2011 — 04:28pm