21C MEDIA GROUP’S CLASSICAL MUSIC SEASON PREVIEW

CONCERTS, SPECIAL EVENTS & RECORDINGS

For 21C’s artists and organizations, the 2023–24 season brings a full lineup of performances and recordings. See highlights of their coming year below (all subject to change).

AUGUST 2023
Aug 10, 22
TEDDY ABRAMS, Music Director of the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA and Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, has a number of high-profile guest-conducting engagements lined up for the 2023-24 season. In August he conducts the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival with a program combining Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony with Megalopolis by TJ Cole, one of the three inaugural members of the Louisville Orchestra’s pioneering Creators Corps initiative, and Gabriel Kahane’s Heirloom with his father, Jeffrey Kahane, as piano soloist (Aug 10). Later that same month, Abrams conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, performing Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite along with the West Coast premiere of Chris Thile’s ATTENTION! (A narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra) – an LA Phil co-commission – and the world premiere of a new work (also an LA Phil commission) from Jonathan Bailey Holland (Aug 22). [Aug 10: Chicago; Aug 22: Los Angeles]

SEPTEMBER 2023
Sep 1
ANTHONY PARNTHER, known for his “charismatic, captivating conducting” (Los Angeles Times), makes his BBC Proms debut at the head of Chineke!, Europe’s first majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra. The conductor previously led Chineke! for the reopening of the newly renovated Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2018, in a historic concert that was broadcast live worldwide by the BBC. This season’s performance includes music by pioneering Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his American namesake, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, as well as Valerie Coleman’s pandemic anthem, Seven O’Clock Shout, on a program with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat, featuring trumpeter Aaron Azunda Akugbo. [London]

Sep 1, 2
Grammy-winning conductor ALAN GILBERT launches his fifth season as Chief Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra with an Opening Night program showcasing the world premiere of The Elements. Collaboratively composed by eminent American composers Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Edgar Meyer, Jessie Montgomery and Kevin Puts, this new five-part suite will feature its dedicatee, 2023-24 Artist-in-Residence Joshua Bell, as violin soloist, on a program that also features Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. [Hamburg]

Sep 6, 8
Grammy-nominated tenor NICHOLAS PHAN – “one of the world’s most remarkable singers” (Boston Globe) – curates and performs in Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago (CAIC)’s twelfth annual Collaborative Works Festival. Drawing inspiration from Walt Whitman, the 2023 festival considers what it means to sing of “One’s-self” in today’s America, examining the art of song as an expression of identity, and using the medium to explore the complexity, multiplicity and intersectionality of identity in America today. The Chicago Tribune writes: “With the Collaborative Works Festivals, … Chicago is doing its bit to rescue ​art song performance ​from the endangered species list.” [Chicago]

Sep 6–Dec 9
In his eighth season as Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, DANIEL HOPE – the violinist whose “thriving solo career [is] built on inventive programming and a probing interpretive style” (New York Times) – embarks on a six-city German tour with the group. This sees him lead the conductorless ensemble from the violin in performances of a new work by British composer David Bruce, flanked by Mozart’s 41st Symphony and Sinfonia Concertante, with Hope and Polish violist Ryszard Groblewski in the solo roles (Sep 6–12). Hope and the orchestra rejoin Groblewski for a program of Bach, Elgar, Bartók, Enescu, Glass and Pärt in Bucharest (Sep 14), before heading on a three-city German tour of works by Mendelssohn, Elgar and Walton (Dec 7–9). [Sep 6: Bielefeld; Sep 7: Flensburg; Sep 8: Brunsbüttel; Sep 9: Dresden; Sep 10: Ulrichshusen; Sep 12: Essen; Sep 14: Bucharest; Dec 7: Itzehoe; Dec 8: Rendsburg; Dec 9: Lübeck]

Sep 7, 8
Always “electrifying in front of an orchestra” (Los Angeles Times), Venezuelan conductor RAFAEL PAYARE returns to the Staatskapelle Berlin for two concerts, the second taking place at the 2023 MusikFest Berlin. Their program pairs Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, featuring the conductor’s wife, cellist ALISA WEILERSTEIN, with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Payare’s recent recording of the symphony was named an “Editor’s Choice” by both Gramophone and BBC Music magazine, which declared: “Hand on heart, it’s a long while since I’ve enjoyed a new Mahler Five as much as this.” [Berlin]

Sep 8, 9
“One of the most prominent composers in the country,” MICHAEL HERSCH “writes masterly modernist music of implacable seriousness” (New Yorker). Two of his new chamber works receive their world and Boston premieres this fall, when violinist William Overcash and bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward give the first performances of across, in grief and detail and sapped from me broken – songs after texts of Anja Utler, featuring soprano Ah Young Hong – one of the composer’s most trusted collaborators – at Chicago’s International Museum of Surgical Science and Boston’s Goethe Institute. [Sep 8: Chicago; Sep 9: Boston]

Sep 8–Nov 10; Sep 15
Grammy-winning French pianist PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD plays Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto on European tours with two Hungarian orchestras, appearing in Bucharest, Timișoara and Maribor, Slovenia, with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, and in London (Cadogan Hall), Guildford, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and Dublin with András Keller and the Concerto Budapest Symphony. Coinciding with the pianist’s Cheltenham appearance, his new recording of Bartók concertos with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony is due for release on September 15. As The Guardian writes of Aimard’s Bartók, “in piano music like this he has no equal.” [Sep 8: Bucharest; Sep 10: Timișoara, Romania; Sep 13: Guildford, UK; Sep 14: London; Sep 15: Cheltenham, UK; Sep 17: Edinburgh; Sep 19: Dublin; Nov 10: Maribor, Slovenia]

Sep 9
MacArthur award-winning conductor MARIN ALSOP returns to London’s Royal Albert Hall to lead the Last Night of the 2023 BBC Proms. She and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus will be joined by British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen for a program featuring the world premiere of James B. Wilson’s 1922, a celebration of the BBC’s centenary. A full decade after becoming the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, Alsop will now represent not only the first woman, but also the first American to guest conduct three Last Nights in the festival’s 128-year history. [London]

Sep 11, 13
American classical singer JULIA BULLOCK gives two performances of a recital program at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in the beautifully restored intimate space of the Board of Officers Room. Known for “communicat[ing] intense, authentic feeling, as if she were singing right from her soul” (Opera News), Bullock was most recently seen at the Armory in the North American premiere of Michel van der Aa’s technologically ambitious chamber opera, Upload, in 2022. [NYC/PAA]

Sep 12–14
RAFAEL PAYARE kicks off the MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (OSM)’s 90th anniversary season, and his second as its Music Director, with Opening Night concerts of two 20th-century masterpieces: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass. The mass will feature vocal soloists Camilla Tilling, Rose Naggar-Tremblay, Ladislav Elgr and Matthew Rose, with OSM organist-in-residence Jean-Willy Kunz on the orchestra’s Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique, now celebrating its own tenth anniversary. [Sep 12, 13, 14: Montreal]

Sep 14–17
Grammy-nominated violinist TESSA LARK, named as one of Lincoln Center’s eleven Emerging Artists for 2020 and the recipient of its prestigious Hunt Family Award, starts her 2023-24 season with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. Under the baton of Music Director Eric Jacobsen, she joins the orchestra for Beethoven’s Triple Concerto along with pianist Inon Barnatan and cellist Raphael Bell. [Sep 14, 15: Norfolk, VA; Sep 17: Charlottesville, VA]

Sep 14–Oct 16; March 16–April 18
The present year marks the 250th anniversary of the Royal Swedish Opera, where conductor ALAN GILBERT has been Music Director since spring 2021. He leads a special concert at Stockholm’s historic Drottningholm Slottsteater to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the King of Sweden, who appointed Gilbert as Royal Court Kapellmeister last fall. Shortly afterwards, the conductor helms a seven-performance run of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, starring Katarina Leoson, Ingela Brimberg and Jeremy Carpenter in Staffan Valdemar Holm’s acclaimed production, before returning to the house for Wagner’s Parsifal next spring. [Sep 14 (concert); Elektra, Sep 23, 26, 30; Oct 4, 10, 13, 16; Parsifal, March 16, 23, 29; April 1, 13, 18: Stockholm]

Sep 15–Oct 1
THE ATLANTA OPERA Discoveries series, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this season, has been widely recognized for presenting new works, new ideas and fresh perspectives, as well as for performances in alternative venues that bring opera to new audiences across the Atlanta metro area. To open the 2023-24 season, The Atlanta Opera returns to the Alliance Theatre to co-present eleven performances of Paul Moravec’s The Shining, with a libretto by Mark Campbell based on the iconic 1977 novel by Stephen King. Premiered at Minnesota Opera in 2016, this new production of The Shining – with a reduced score for chamber orchestra – comes from San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle and is directed by Brian Staufenbiel, a specialist in multimedia, immersive and interdisciplinary productions. The Shining will feature Kearstin Piper Brown and Kelly Kaduce – veterans of the San Francisco and Minnesota productions respectively – sharing the role of Wendy Torrance, with Aubrey Allicock as Dick Hallorann and Craig Irvin as Jack Torrance. There will be a special opening-night celebration on September 23. [Sep 15, 17, 23, 26; Oct 1: Atlanta]

Sep 16
Galvanizing Music Director TEDDY ABRAMS and the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA open their 2023–24 season outdoors at Iroquois Park with a Kentucky-themed concert titled “Our Kentucky Home,” including the Kentucky premiere of ATTENTION! (A narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra), composed and performed by Chris Thile, whose family moved to Murray, Kentucky when he was a teenager. A work by Creators Corps veteran Lisa Bielawa is also on the bill. Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite and Rossini’s William Tell Overture round out the program. [Louisville]

Sep 21–23; Jan 16–20
Following the release of their first recording together, on which they “offer a reading of Mahler’s Fifth of intensity and rich orchestral exploration, a real marker in their ongoing partnership” (Gramophone), the MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA and Music Director RAFAEL PAYARE continue their ongoing, multi-season immersion in Mahler’s music. In September they combine his First Symphony, the “Titan,” with Lera Auerbach’s Icarus and Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, featuring pianist Alexander Malofeev (Sep 21, 23), and in January they pair Mahler’s Seventh with Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto, for which they will be joined by violinist Simone Lamsma (Jan 16, 17, 20). [Sep 21, 23; Jan 16, 17, 20: Montreal]

Sep 23–Nov 6
Multiple Grammy Award-winning, San Francisco-based vocal ensemble CHANTICLEER opens its Bay Area season with “Music of a Silent World,” a program of songs of the natural world that gives a voice to otherwise voiceless rocks and stones and trees and rivers. The keystone of the program is a new arrangement of Majel Connery’s The Rivers are our Brothers – a joint commission with Musica Sierra – with repertoire also including music by William Byrd, Heinrich Isaac and Max Reger; new arrangements of “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty and “The Weather” by Lawrence the Band; and a new commission from Chanticleer’s composer-in-residence, Ayanna Woods. Following the Bay Area appearances, the group tours the program throughout the U.S. and Canada, including the group’s debut at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music. [Sep 23: Santa Clara, CA; Sep 24: San Francisco; Sep 26: Sacramento; Oct 3: Macon, GA; Oct 5: Atlanta; Oct 6: Carrollton, GA; Oct 8: Loudon, TN; Oct 11, 12: Princeton, NJ; Oct 14: Henderson, NV; Oct 21: Ann Arbor, MI; Oct 22: Grand Rapids, MI; Oct 23: Holland, MI; Oct 26: London, ON; Oct 27: Toronto; Oct 28: Kingston, ON; Nov 6: San Francisco]

Sep 23–June 9
Grammy-winning Austrian conductor MANFRED HONECK opens his 16th season as Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) with a gala concert featuring Renée Fleming (Sep 23). Over the coming season with the orchestra, where his contract has been extended through 2027–28, Honeck also leads the world premieres of four new PSO commissions: Yizkor by Boris Pigovat (Oct 6, 8); new works by Katherine Balch (Feb 16, 18) and Samy Moussa (April 26–28); and Double Concerto for Oboe and Horn by Michael Daugherty (June 7–9). Other upcoming PSO highlights include his accounts of Brahms’s A German Requiem (Dec 1, 3), Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (April 20), Bruckner’s Eighth (April 26–28) and Mahler’s Fifth (June 7–9), as well as a special collaboration with Violins of Hope, featuring string instruments played by Jewish Holocaust victims (Nov 25). As Gramophone put it, when selecting the PSO as the only American nominee for its “2022 Orchestra of the Year” award: “Honeck’s tenure, since 2008, at the helm of this superb Pennsylvanian orchestra has really delivered.” [Sep 23; Oct 6, 8; Nov 25; Dec 1, 3; Feb 16, 18; April 20, 26, 27, 28; June 7, 8, 9: Pittsburgh]

Sep 28–Feb 25
Over the coming season, Grammy winner DANIIL TRIFONOV – “without question the most astounding pianist of our age” (The Times, UK) – gives his celebrated interpretation of Brahms’s First Piano Concerto with leading orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic: the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst, the Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra with Paavo Järvi, and the Toronto Symphony led by Gustavo Gimeno. Trifonov also joins the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Susanna Mälkki for accounts of the great late-Romantic composer’s Second Piano Concerto. [Sep 28; Oct 1: Cleveland; Oct 6, 7, 8: Philadelphia; Nov 26: London; Jan 10, 11, 13: Toronto; Feb 23, 24, 25: Los Angeles]

Sep 29–April 28
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD continues paying international tribute to his late friend György Ligeti, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year. The composer considered Aimard “today’s leading interpreter of contemporary piano music,” and dedicated several of his Études to the pianist, who won a Gramophone Award for his recording of the complete set. This fall, Études recitals take Aimard to Zurich and New York, where he not only juxtaposes them with works reflecting their cultural inspirations in the New York Philharmonic’s “Artist Spotlight” series, but also collaborates with the orchestra under Susanna Mälkki on performances of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. In addition, he plays selections from Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata in Frankfurt and at Paris’s Thêatre des Champs-Elysées, as well as giving recitals of the Hungarian composer’s music on an Asian tour with stops in Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai and Tokyo, where he also reprises Ligeti’s concerto with the Yomiori Nippon Symphony. [Sep 29: Frankfurt; Oct 1: Zurich; Nov 2, 3, 4, 7: NYC/DGH; Nov 24: Beijing; Nov 26: Xi’an; Nov 28: Shanghai; Dec 1: Tokyo; Dec 5: Tokyo (concerto); April 28: Paris]

Sep 30; Oct 5–7
“One of finest musicians working today” (Washington Post), celebrated Norwegian pianist LEIF OVE ANDSNES performs Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with two U.S. orchestras this fall: first with Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony, and then with the New York Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden. Released by Sony Classical as The Beethoven Journey, Andsnes’s interpretations of the composer’s concertos have been recognized with BBC Music’s Recording of the Year, iTunes’ Best Instrumental Album of the Year and Belgium’s Prix Caecilia. [Sep 30: Miami; Oct 5, 6, 7: NYC/DGH]

Sep 30–Feb 18
Violinist TESSA LARK, a Kentucky native equally well-known as a classical musician and for her ability as a fiddler in the Appalachian and bluegrass traditions, performs Michael Torke’s Sky with both the Signature Symphony in Tulsa (Sep 30) and the Sarasota Orchestra (Nov 3–5) this season. Inspired by Irish reels and American bluegrass, the work was written for her unique skill set, as was Carlos Izcaray’s Violin Concerto, of which she gives the world premiere with the Alabama Symphony, where Izcaray is Music Director (Nov 17, 18). Other U.S. appearances this season include Dvořák’s Romance for Violin and Orchestra in F and Ravel’s Tzigane with the Buffalo Philharmonic (Oct 21, 22), and Wynton Marsalis’s jazz- and blues-inflected Violin Concerto with South Carolina’s Greenville Symphony (Feb 17, 18). [Sep 30: Tulsa, OK; Oct 21, 22: Buffalo, NY; Nov 3, 4, 5: Sarasota, FL; Nov 17, 18: Birmingham, AL; Feb 17, 18: Greenville, SC]

OCTOBER 2023
Oct 4
The CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (CSO) performs Carnegie Hall’s 2023-24 Opening Night Gala concert. Conducted by Riccardo Muti, who remains a regular CSO presence after concluding his historic 13-year tenure as its Music Director, the gala program pairs Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition, as orchestrated by Ravel, with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, featuring Leonidas Kavakos. [NYC/CH]

Oct 6–8
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO)’s world premiere performances of Yizkor by Boris Pigovat, a new PSO commission (see Sep 23–June 9). [Oct 6, 8: Pittsburgh]

Oct 6–13
Led by RAFAEL PAYARE, in his fifth season as its Music Director, the SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY (SDS) makes its first Carnegie Hall appearance in a full decade. The concert concludes a three-stop U.S. tour, with a program of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, featuring ALISA WEILERSTEIN, a cellist of “explosive emotional energy” (New York Times); the New York premiere of a San Diego Symphony commission from Carlos Simon; and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Released last year, SDS’s recording of the Russian composer’s Eleventh Symphony, “The Year 1905,” was hailed as “a mandatory purchase,” in which “the ferocity unleashed by Payare and his San Diego players is really visceral, in-your-gut stuff” (Fanfare magazine). [Oct 6: Aliso Viejo, CA; Oct 12: Bethlehem, PA; Oct 13: NYC/CH]

Oct 11–14
DANIIL TRIFONOV gives four performances of Schumann’s sole Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. The pianist’s long history with the New York orchestra includes headlining complete Rachmaninov concerto cycles at its Rachmaninov Festival in 2015, launching its 2018-19 season, and serving as its 2019-20 Artist-in-Residence. [NYC/DGH]

Oct 12–March 30
The DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) under the baton of Music Director Fabio Luisi performs three world premieres of DSO commissions during the 2023-24 season. In October, Luisi leads the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s Snapshots. In February, violinist Karen Gomyo and trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, making her DSO debut, join the orchestra and Luisi for the world premiere of Xi Wang’s Year 2020: Concerto for Trumpet, Violin and Orchestra. Finally, in March, the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s new Piano Concerto, performed by soloist Jeremy Denk in his debut with the orchestra, shares the bill with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. [Oct 12, 14, 15; Feb 22, 23, 24, 25; March 28, 29, 30: Dallas]

Oct 12–May 9
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S (OSL) – “one of the most versatile and galvanic ensembles in the U.S.” (WQXR) – gives a record six performances at Carnegie Hall during its 2023-24 season. In October, Lang Lang performs music of Saint-Saëns under the baton of Jahja Ling (Oct 12); while in February, Isabelle Faust is featured in Brahms’s Violin Concerto (Feb 8). Principal Conductor Bernard Labadie conducts both Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Dec 7) and an all-Brahms program centered on A German Requiem (May 9), the former featuring soprano Lauren Snouffer, contralto Avery Amereau, tenor Andrew Haji, baritone Joshua Hopkins and La Chapelle de Québec; while the latter features soprano Erin Morley, baritone Andrè Schuen, La Chapelle de Québec and the Handel and Haydn Society Chorus. A special Veteran’s Day program featuring historian John Monsky (Nov 8) and a performance of Carmina Burana conducted by Tito Muñoz and featuring soprano Ying Fang, tenor NICHOLAS PHAN and baritone Norman Garrett (Feb 27) rounds out OSL’s Carnegie season. [Oct 12; Nov 8; Dec 7; Feb 8, 27; May 9: NYC/CH]

Oct 13
LEIF OVE ANDSNES began his partnership with the then-two-year-old Virgin Classics label in 1990, before signing with EMI Classics nine years later. Warner Music Group acquired both catalogs in 2013, and now issues Leif Ove Andsnes: The Complete Warner Classics Edition 1990-2010, a 36-CD retrospective containing multiple Gramophone Award-winners. One particular focus of the collection is Nordic music, especially that of Andsnes’s compatriot Grieg, whose A-minor concerto anchored his first recording for Virgin and whose Lyric Pieces the pianist recorded on the composer’s own piano at Troldhaugen. Other highlights include numerous recordings of the music of Rachmaninov, Schubert and Schumann, plus two recordings each of Brahms, Chopin, Haydn and Mozart.

Oct 19
MARIN ALSOP inaugurates her four-season appointment as Principal Guest Conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra with an all-American program of Gershwin, James P. Johnson, Copland, Barber, Bernstein and Joan Tower that kicks off the orchestra’s “Let Freedom Ring” series. It was one of her previous appearances with the orchestra that prompted The Times of London to marvel: “Alsop whipped up the excitement right to the end.” [London]

Oct 19–Feb 13
GATEWAYS MUSIC FESTIVAL presents three programs in New York City this season, beginning with the Gateways Brass Collective and organist Nathaniel Gumbs at Harlem’s storied Abyssinian Baptist Church (Oct 19). Pianist Clayton Stephenson, who in 2022 made history as the first Black finalist at the Van Cliburn Competition and was a 2022 Gilmore Young Artist, performs in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall (Oct 21); and the Gateways Chamber Players with violinist Tai Murray and narration by Phylicia Rashad perform music by Stravinsky and Wynton Marsalis in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall (Oct 22). The Gateways Chamber Players concert will be reprised in February 2024 in Washington, DC (Feb 13). [Oct 19: NYC/ABC; Oct 21, 22: NYC/CH; Feb 13: Washington, DC]

Oct 21, 22
TESSA LARK performs Dvořák’s Romance for Violin and Orchestra in F and Ravel’s Tzigane with the Buffalo Philharmonic (see Sep 30–Feb 18). [Buffalo, NY]

Oct 22–May 15
Highlights of CARAMOOR’s fall/spring season, with performances in the intimate surroundings of the Rosen House Music Room, include genre-bending South African cellist Abel Selaocoe, whose programs seamlessly blend Western and non-Western musical traditions (Oct 22); superlative period-instrument ensemble The English Concert led by Harry Bicket, following up on their 2021 all-Vivaldi performance with music of Vivaldi, Geminiani and others (Dec 8); baritone Will Liverman, who earned raves and a subsequent Grammy for his “breakout performance” in Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones at the Met, giving his debut recital at the venue (March 24); and pianist Seong-Jin Cho, first prize winner at the 2015 Chopin International Competition, playing a program of Haydn, Ravel and Liszt (May 15). [Oct 22; Dec 8; March 24; May 15: Katonah, NY]

Oct 27–Nov 4
DANIIL TRIFONOV performs Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody and Fourth Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra and its Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, on a European tour of Luxembourg, Paris, Hamburg and Baden Baden. Recorded with the same forces, the pianist’s three-volume Rachmaninov concerto series was recognized with two Grammy nominations and BBC Music’s Concerto Recording of the Year. [Oct 27, 28: Luxembourg; Oct 29, 30: Paris; Nov 1, 2: Hamburg; Nov 3, 4: Baden Baden, Germany]

Oct 28
Continuing the season’s cinematic theme and getting into the Halloween spirit a few days early, THE ATLANTA OPERA Discoveries series brings a new innovation to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre with the opera-film Frankenstein. Composer-conductor Michael Shapiro wrote the score for this operatic adaptation of James Whale’s 1931 film version of Mary Shelley’s horror classic, which starred Boris Karloff as the monster. Shapiro conducts the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and five soloists live-to-film in a score that Cashbox magazine found “hypnotic.” The review continued: “The audience was riveted to their seats. … His score is majestic and flowing when set against the flickering image on the screen, touching during tender moments, harrowing during disturbing ones.” [Atlanta]

Oct 28–Nov 8
John Adams is one of JULIA BULLOCK’s frequent collaborators: she created the role of Dame Shirley in his Girls of the Golden West, as well as singing the role of Kitty Oppenheimer on the Grammy-nominated 2018 Nonesuch recording of his opera Doctor Atomic with the composer conducting the BBC Symphony. Commissioned to write a new Antony & Cleopatra to celebrate the centennial of the San Francisco Opera, Adams turned to Bullock once again to bring one of Shakespeare’s greatest female protagonists to life. A co-commission and co-production with the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Metropolitan Opera House, the opera has its European premiere this fall at the Liceu with Bullock in the title role, making her house debut. Adams adapted the libretto himself from Shakespeare’s tragedy, collaborating with director Elkhanah Pulitzer and playwright Lucia Scheckner to combine the mythic image of antiquity with the glamor of 1930s Hollywood. Gerald Finley sings opposite Bullock in the role of Antony. [Oct 28, 30; Nov 2, 4, 6, 8: Barcelona]

Oct 28; Nov 10, 12
CAL PERFORMANCES presents three premieres in October and November, all three of them Cal Performances co-commissions. Following their collaboration on Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro, Peter Sellars, Grant Gershon and singers of the Los Angeles Master Chorale reunite for the Bay Area premiere in UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall of a fully staged ceremony of remembrance and devotion, performed by 24 singers accompanied by organ and viola da gamba and inspired by Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien (Music to Accompany a Departure) (Oct 28). Schütz composed the work – an exploration of mortality and grief – in the 1630s, during the ravages of the 30 Years’ War, and it was dedicated to the memory of one of his dearest friends. Next, the San Francisco Symphony returns to Zellerbach Hall with music director Esa-Pekka Salonen for a program featuring the world premiere of a new work, Drowned by Light, by Jens Ibsen, the most recent winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project, a collaboration with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music designed to foster the creation and performance of new music from early-career Black American composers. Ibsen brings to his music a wide range of life experience and influences: he’s a classically trained, Ghana-born metalhead who sang as a principal soloist in the Vienna Boys Choir. Salonen also conducts the orchestra in his own Kínēma, a showcase for principal clarinetist Carey Bell; and Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements (Nov 10). Finally, the Grammy and Gramophone Award-winning Takács Quartet performs the world premiere of a new work by California violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, along with quartets by Haydn and Beethoven (Nov 12). [Oct 28; Nov 10, 12: Berkeley, CA]

Oct 29
Composer MICHAEL HERSCH’s one step to the next, worlds ending (2022) receives its U.S. premiere from soprano Ah Young Hong, a leading interpreter of his music, and the Talea Ensemble. The artists’ New York City program also features their account of Hersch’s anonymous beneath the lemon trees (2020). [NYC/St. P & St. A]

NOVEMBER 2023
Nov 2–5; Feb 23–25
Well known for her commitment to expanding the cello repertoire, cellist INBAL SEGEV released a “hugely impressive” (The Guardian) recording of Grammy-nominated composer Anna Clyne’s cello concerto DANCE – which she commissioned after being introduced to the composer by path-breaking conductor MARIN ALSOP – on the Avie label in 2020. Alsop and Segev team up during the 2023-24 season to perform the concerto with two separate orchestras, first with the São Paulo Symphony in November and then the Colorado Symphony in February. [Nov 2, 3, 4, 5: São Paulo, Brazil; Feb 23, 24, 25: Denver]

Nov 2–5; March 8–10
Now in his sixth season as Music Director and Concertmaster of California’s New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO), DANIEL HOPE leads the ensemble in four Bay Area concerts at the first “California Festival: A Celebration of New Music.” Featuring mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and an eight-voice chorus, their candlelit “Visitations” program explores connections with the afterlife through the world premiere of Doña Sebastiana, a new NCCO commission from Nicolás Lell Benavides, and works by Schubert, Rachmaninov, Dukas, Villa-Lobos, Lieberson, Ramirez, Arvo Pärt, Hildur Guðnadóttir and Carlos Simon. Next spring, Hope and the NCCO reunite for San Francisco and Stanford performances of Haydn’s First Cello Concerto with American cellist Sterling Elliott, Stravinsky’s neoclassical ballet suite Pulcinella, and works by Gluck and Bloch. [Nov 2: Berkeley, CA; Nov 3, 4: San Francisco; Nov 5: Tiburon, CA; March 8, 9: San Francisco; March 10: Stanford, CA]

Nov 2–7
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD plays Ligeti’s Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Susanna Mälkki (Nov 2–4) before juxtaposing the late Hungarian composer’s Études with works reflecting their cultural inspirations in the orchestra’s “Artist Spotlight” series (Nov 7) (see Sep 29–April 28). [Nov 2, 3, 4, 7: NYC/DGH]

Nov 3–5
TESSA LARK performs Michael Torke’s Sky with the Sarasota Orchestra (see Sep 30–Feb 18). [Nov 3, 4, 5: Sarasota, FL]

Nov 3–12; Feb 13–18
Chief Conductor ALAN GILBERT embarks on two European tours with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra next season. This fall, after previewing their program in Hamburg, they tour a pairing of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, featuring Artist-in-Residence Joshua Bell, to Basel, Erlangen, Budapest, Zagreb and Frankfurt. Then next spring Gilbert leads the orchestra in performances of Brahms’s First Symphony and Bartók’s First Piano Concerto, with Ivan Levit as soloist, on a four-stop tour of Spain and Germany. [Nov 3, 4: Hamburg; Nov 6: Basel, Switzerland; Nov 7: Erlangen, Germany; Nov 9: Budapest: Nov 11: Zagreb, Croatia; Nov 12: Frankfurt; Feb 13: Madrid; Feb 15: Oviedo, Spain; Feb 17: Düsseldorf, Germany; Feb 18: Hanover, Germany]

Nov 5–April 6
MacArthur Award-winning cellist ALISA WEILERSTEIN introduced her major new multisensory performance series, “FRAGMENTS,” this past season in Toronto, Southern California, Carnegie Hall and Cleveland, and has a summer performance slotted for Tanglewood in August. This fall, she continues with performances of FRAGMENTS 1 at Boston’s Celebrity Series, the Maison Symphonique de Montréal, the California Festival in Los Angeles and the La Jolla Music Society, followed by a spring performance in Washington, DC. Previewing the Carnegie Hall performance, the New York Times observed: “It is hard to think of many soloists of a similar stature who would dare to bring anything like it to the stage.” [Nov 5: Boston; Nov 10: Montreal; Nov 15: Los Angeles; Nov 16: La Jolla, CA; April 6: Washington, DC]

Nov 8
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S performs a special Veteran’s Day program featuring historian John Monsky in Carnegie Hall (see Oct 12–May 9). [NYC/CH]

Nov 9–12
Cellist INBAL SEGEV, an established driving force in the creation of new cello repertoire for the 21st century, gives the world premiere performances of Ukrainian composer Victoria Vita Polevá’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra with conductor Kirill Karabits leading the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, which commissioned the work. [Nov 9, 11, 12: Dallas]

Nov 10, 12
CAL PERFORMANCES presents the San Francisco Symphony in Zellerbach Hall led by music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, performing the world premiere of a new work by Jens Ibsen, Salonen’s own Kínēma and Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements (Nov 10). Two days later, the Grammy and Gramophone Award-winning Takács Quartet performs the world premiere of a new work by California violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, along with quartets by Haydn and Beethoven (Nov 12) (see Oct 28-Nov 12). [Berkeley, CA]

Nov 15–March 18
DANIIL TRIFONOV tours a solo recital program of Rameau’s Suite in A minor, Mozart’s Twelfth Piano Sonata, Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses and Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata to Boston, San Francisco, Barcelona, Vienna, Munich, Dallas and New York’s Carnegie Hall. It was after one of Trifonov’s numerous sold-out Carnegie recitals that the New York Times hailed him as “one of the most awesome pianists of our time.” [Nov 15: Boston; Nov 19: San Francisco; Nov 29: Barcelona; Dec 4: Vienna; Dec 6: Munich; Dec 12: NYC/CH; March 18: Dallas]

Nov 17
TEDDY ABRAMS’s guest-conductor engagements continue as he makes his debut with the Helsinki Philharmonic, in a program that combines Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition – using Ravel’s orchestration – with Mason Bates’s Anthology of Fantastic Zoology. Commissioned by the Chicago Symphony, Bates’s piece is a musical realization of a literary work of the same name by Jorge Luis Borges, and is described by the composer as a kind of “psychedelic Carnival of the Animals.” [Helsinki]

Nov 17
CAL PERFORMANCES presents a performance at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall by the Grammy-winning Silkroad Ensemble under the leadership of 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner, multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, illuminating the impact of under-recognized voices in America’s westward expansion. The American Railroad project, presented in its first tour, explores the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad through the contributions of African American, Chinese, Irish, Indigenous and other communities, their cultures, and their music. Chinese traditional instruments like the guzheng, pipa, erhu and qinqin are contrasted with the fiddle, bones, tambo and banjo of Black musical traditions, and their Indigenous and Celtic counterparts. New compositions and commissions weave all these traditions together to tell a new version of the American story. The performance is part of Cal Performances 2023-24 Illuminations: “Individual & Community” series, exploring the tensions that come into play while balancing the interests of the individual with those of the group. [Berkeley, CA]

Nov 17, 18
TESSA LARK gives the world premiere of Carlos Izcaray’s Violin Concerto with the Alabama Symphony, where the composer is Music Director (see Sep 30–Feb 18). [Birmingham, AL]

Nov 19
CAL PERFORMANCES presents The English Concert, Britain’s premier early-music ensemble, in its annual engagement at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall under the baton of Harry Bicket. This season the ensemble presents a concert performance of Handel’s Rodelinda, a story of enduring marital love that remains steadfast through every adversity, with soprano Lucy Crowe in the title role along with countertenors Iestyn Davies and Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and tenor Eric Ferring. [Berkeley, CA]

Nov 22, 23
JULIA BULLOCK’s 2022 album Walking in the Dark was anchored by two large-scale orchestral works – Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and the aria “Memorial de Tlatelolco” from John Adams’s El Niño – both featuring London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. The soprano is a Featured Artist with Philharmonia for the 2023-24 season, performing two related programs in November. For the first, she and the orchestra reprise the Barber – long a staple of her repertoire – on a program with Dvořák’s spiritual- and folk music-inspired “New World” Symphony and William Grant Still’s First Symphony, “Afro-American.” The orchestra repeats the Dvořák and Still symphonies the following evening, this time contextualized by Bullock’s renditions of two settings by Margaret Bonds of poems by Langston Hughes; both composer and writer were leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Bonds discovered Hughes’s poetry as a university student and was inspired to continue her studies in the face of terrible racism, and later she and Hughes became lifelong friends. Between the Bonds songs are three songs by George Gershwin. [London]

Nov 22–30
Chief Conductor ALAN GILBERT helms the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra on a tour of Japan. Their all-Brahms program combines the composer’s Second Symphony with his First Piano Concerto, featuring Kyohei Sorita as soloist. [Nov 22: Osaka; Nov 23: Matsumoto; Nov 24: Nagoya; Nov 26: Kyoto (educational event); Nov 28, 29; Tokyo; Nov 30: Akita]

Nov 23
MARIN ALSOP has just been appointed as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. In their inaugural season together, she leads a performance of Penderecki’s seldom-heard opera The Black Mask that will be recorded and may also be streamed; details to come. [Katowice, Poland]

Nov 24–Dec 5
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD gives recitals of Ligeti’s music on an Asian tour with stops in Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai and Tokyo, where he also performs the composer’s Piano Concerto with the Yomiori Nippon Symphony (see Sep 29–April 28). [Nov 24: Beijing; Nov 26: Xi’an; Nov 28: Shanghai; Dec 1: Tokyo; Dec 5: Tokyo (concerto)]

Nov 25
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in a special collaboration with Violins of Hope, featuring string instruments played by Jewish Holocaust victims (see Sep 23–June 9). [Pittsburgh]

Nov 25–Dec 23
Celebrated vocal ensemble CHANTICLEER tours “A Chanticleer Christmas,” which has reached national audiences through a PBS special and multiple appearances on NBC’s Today show, across the U.S., including performances in New York and Chicago and culminating with nine cities in California. From its opening candlelit chant procession to its triumphant gospel conclusion, the beloved holiday program hearkens back to some of the group’s most cherished traditions and the original vision of its founder, Louis Botto. [Nov 25: Fairfax, VA; Nov 26: Clarksburg, WV; Nov 28: Frederick, MD; Nov 29: Lancaster, PA; Nov 30: South Orange, NJ; Dec 1, 3: NYC/St. I; Dec 5, 6: Chicago; Dec 7: Goshen, IN; Dec 9: Louisville, KY; Dec 13: Los Angeles; Dec 14: Stanford, CA; Dec 15: Petaluma, CA; Dec 17: Oakland, CA; Dec 18: Sacramento, CA; Dec 19: Berkeley, CA; Dec 21: Santa Clara, CA; Dec 22: Carmel, CA; Dec 23: San Francisco]

Nov 26
DANIIL TRIFONOV plays Brahms’s First Piano Concerto with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and Paavo Järvi (see Sep 28–Feb 25). [London]

Nov 28
The VIÑOLY FOUNDATION presents “A Musical Celebration of the Life of Rafael Viñoly,” a special memorial concert at Carnegie Hall to honor the distinguished Uruguayan architect who passed away in March 2023. Featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with solo appearances by violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Jonathan Biss and musicians from Jazz at Lincoln Center, the concert marks the launch of the foundation, which will primarily support architects making contributions to the public realm. Rafael Viñoly is remembered for such iconic buildings as the Tokyo International Forum, Cleveland Museum of Art and Kimmel Center for the Arts, where the Philadelphia Orchestra makes its home. [NYC/CH]

Nov 30; Dec 2
ANTHONY PARNTHER makes his Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) Delta Classical Series debut with a program close to his heart. As a veteran Hollywood bassoonist, Parnther has played on many of the Star Wars soundtracks, and in Atlanta he conducts the bassoon concerto The Five Sacred Trees by film legend John Williams, who drew inspiration for the concerto from Celtic mythology. Former ASO principal bassoonist Andrew Brady is the soloist. Parnther opens the concert with a world premiere by the rising-star film composer Chanda Dancy and concludes with the Symphony No. 3 by Arkansas native Florence Price, who despite racial and gender barriers had works performed by major American orchestras as early as the 1930s and 40s. [Atlanta]

Nov 30; Dec 11–21
As artist-in-residence of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018-19, JULIA BULLOCK curated a new chamber orchestra arrangement by Christian Reif of John Adams’s Christmas oratorio, El Niño, for the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) – of which the soprano is a founding core member – at the Met Cloisters in New York. Interweaving biblical verse with poetry by Latin American writers, El Niño considers the Nativity story from Mary’s perspective and explores in Adams’s words “what is meant by a miracle.” This season, Bullock is featured in a performance of the work along with mezzo-soprano Jasmin White, countertenor Anthony Roth Constanzo and bass-baritone Davóne Tines, with Reif leading the Cincinnati Symphony in his own arrangement, now titled Nativity Reconsidered: El Niño (Nov 30). Bullock also reprises the piece with AMOC on tour in the U.S. with stops including Kansas City, MO, Stanford, CA, and other cities TBD; and later in the spring she makes her Metropolitan Opera debut with the same work in a new production conducted by MARIN ALSOP (see April 23–May 17). [Nov 30: Cincinnati; Dec 11–21: U.S. tour]

DECEMBER 2023
Dec 1–3
RAFAEL PAYARE returns to the Philadelphia Orchestra for a pairing of Mahler’s First Symphony with the U.S. premiere of Ephemerae, a piano concerto co-commissioned by the orchestra from Peruvian composer Jimmy López Bellido, with Spanish pianist Javier Perianes as soloist. “Payare is electric,” declared the Philadelphia Inquirer after the conductor’s Philadelphia Orchestra debut. “He seems to hit the jackpot wherever he goes.” [Dec 1, 2, 3: Philadelphia]

Dec 1, 3
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s performances of Brahms’s A German Requiem (see Sep 23–June 9). [Pittsburgh]

Dec 5, 6
The MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA and Music Director RAFAEL PAYARE offer their interpretation of Messiaen’s monumental Turangalîla-Symphony, in which French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet undertakes the virtuosic piano role. [Montreal]

Dec 7
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S, led by Principal Conductor Bernard Labadie, performs Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in Carnegie Hall, featuring soprano Lauren Snouffer, contralto Avery Amereau, tenor Andrew Haji, baritone Joshua Hopkins and La Chapelle de Québec (see Oct 12–May 9). [NYC/CH]

Dec 7–9
DANIEL HOPE and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra embark on a three-city German tour of works by Mendelssohn, Elgar and Walton (see Sep 6–Dec 9). [Dec 7: Itzehoe; Dec 8: Rendsburg; Dec 9: Lübeck]

Dec 8
After an all-Vivaldi performance in 2021, the English Concert, led from the harpsichord by Harry Bicket, returns to CARAMOOR’s Rosen House Music Room for music by Vivaldi and Geminiani alongside lesser-known Baroque gems (see Oct 22–May 15). [Katonah, NY]

Dec 11–21
JULIA BULLOCK performs Nativity Reconsidered: El Niño with AMOC on a U.S. tour that includes stops in Missouri, Connecticut and New York (see Nov 30–May 17). [Dec 11-21: Locations TBD]

Dec 12
DANIIL TRIFONOV performs his solo recital program of Rameau’s Suite in A minor, Mozart’s Twelfth Piano Sonata, Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses and Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata at New York’s Carnegie Hall (see Nov 15–March 18). [NYC/CH]

Dec 20–23
ANTHONY PARNTHER conducts the New York Philharmonic in a live-to-film concert presentation of the Oscar-winning score for the original Black Panther. Music Director of California’s San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra, Parnther is equally well-known as an international guest conductor and for leading blockbuster film and TV scores, including Avatar: The Way of Water and the sequel to Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. [Dec 20, 21, 22, 23: NYC/DGH]

Dec 24–26
As Principal Guest Conductor of Japan’s Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, ALAN GILBERT leads the orchestra in holiday performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, featuring vocal soloists Christina Nilsson, Rinat Shaham, Michael Weinius and Morris Robinson with Tokyo’s New National Theatre Chorus. It was under Gilbert’s leadership of the same work that the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra “found Beethoven’s fire, with clear and controlled playing in the earlier movements giving way to an explosive choral finale” (The Guardian), at London’s BBC Proms. [Dec 24, 25, 26: Tokyo]

JANUARY 2024
Jan 6
Grammy-nominated violinist TESSA LARK returns to the Las Vegas Philharmonic under the baton of Donato Cabrera to perform Beethoven’s sole Violin Concerto [Las Vegas].

Jan 7–17
JULIA BULLOCK gives four performances of a characteristically innovative and genre-defying recital program in January. Beginning at Union College in Schenectady, New York, the soprano also performs the program at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, makes her Baltimore recital debut in Shriver Hall, and ends at Brown University in Providence. Repertoire varies with each performance, but selections include two works from her 2022 album Walking in the Dark – Connie Converse’s One by One and Billy Taylor’s I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free – rubbing shoulders with composers as varied as Schubert, Wolf, Rossini, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Kurt Weill, Luciano Berio, John Cage and more. [Jan 7: Schenectady, NY; Jan 11: Philadelphia; Jan 14: Baltimore; Jan 17: Providence, RI]

Jan 10–13
DANIIL TRIFONOV plays Brahms’s First Piano Concerto with the Toronto Symphony and Gustavo Gimeno (see Sep 28–Feb 25). [Jan 10, 11, 13: Toronto]

Jan 12
New Focus Recordings releases the world premiere recording of MICHAEL HERSCH’s one-act opera Poppaea, a “major highlight of the [2021] Wien Modern Festival” (Kronen Zeitung, Austria). Set to a libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann, Hersch’s opera offers a 21st-century take on the story of a Roman Empress, the ways she is abused and silenced, and her own cruelty and desires. The recording captures its world premiere production, live at the co-commissioning ZeitRäume Basel festival, where soprano and leading Hersch interpreter Ah Young Hong created the title role, with tenor Steve Davislim as Nero, and mezzo-soprano Silke Gäng as the emperor’s doomed first wife, Octavia. They are supported by Ensemble SoloVoices and Ensemble Phoenix under the baton of Jürg Henneberger.

Jan 13
Teddy Abrams and the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA continue their multi-year exploration of the historical interconnections between Black and Jewish musicians in a collaboration with the St. Stephen Choir, one of the premier gospel choirs in the country. The performance also features a new set of music exploring the intersection of klezmer, jazz, and gospel styles. [Louisville]

Jan 16–20
The MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA and Music Director RAFAEL PAYARE continue their ongoing, multi-season immersion in Mahler’s music with performances of his Seventh Symphony. They complete their program with Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto, for which they will be joined by violinist Simone Lamsma (see Sep 21–23). [Jan 16, 17, 20: Montreal]

Jan 17–Feb 3
In her fifth season as Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, MARIN ALSOP leads the orchestra in Lydia Steier’s new production of Bernstein’s satirical operetta Candide at the Theater an der Wien. Alsop is a former protégé of Bernstein’s, and her live recording of Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus was released by LSO Live in 2021. [Jan 17, 19, 21, 23, 26, 28, 30; Feb 1, 3: Vienna]

Jan 31, Feb 1
ALISA WEILERSTEIN joins conductor RAFAEL PAYARE in Stockholm to play Barber’s Cello Concerto with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. When Weilerstein played the concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra, BachTrack reported, “The concerto, composed in 1945, is a technical tour de force, and seemed tailor-made for Weilerstein’s expansive – and expressive – cello sound.” [Stockholm]

FEBRUARY 2024
Feb 8
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S is joined by violinist Isabelle Faust for a performance of Brahms’s Violin Concerto in Carnegie Hall (see Oct 12–May 9). [NYC/CH]

Feb 13
GATEWAYS MUSIC FESTIVAL presents the Gateways Chamber Players in Washington, DC, where they perform music by Stravinsky and Wynton Marsalis, with Tai Murray on violin and narration by Phylicia Rashad (see Oct 19–Feb 13). [Washington, DC].

Feb 13–18
Chief Conductor ALAN GILBERT leads the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in performances of Brahms’s First Symphony and Bartók’s First Piano Concerto, with Ivan Levit as soloist, on a five-stop tour of Spain and Germany (see Nov 2–12). [Feb 13: Madrid; Feb 14: Santander, Spain; Feb 15: Oviedo, Spain; Feb 17: Cologne; Feb 18: Düsseldorf, Germany]

Feb 16, 18
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO)’s world premiere performances of a new PSO commission from Katherine Balch (see Sep 23-June 9). [Feb 16, 18: Pittsburgh]

Feb 17, 18
TEDDY ABRAMS makes his debut with the Buffalo Philharmonic next winter, conducting Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” along with Michael Tilson Thomas’s The Diary of Anne Frank. A protégé of Tilson Thomas’s from the age of eleven, Abrams credits him with being one of his most important mentors. The Diary of Anne Frank was Tilson Thomas’s earliest composition, written in 1990 to be narrated by Audrey Hepburn when she was a Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF. [Buffalo, NY]

Feb 17, 18
TESSA LARK performs Wynton Marsalis’s jazz- and blues-inflected Violin Concerto with South Carolina’s Greenville Symphony (see Sep 30–Feb 18). [Greenville, SC]

Feb 20, 21
Leading the Zurich Chamber Orchestra from the violin at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Music Director DANIEL HOPE traces the history of dance from the Renaissance and Baroque to the waltz, foxtrot and tango. [Hamburg]

Feb 22–25
The DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) under the baton of Music Director Fabio Luisi performs the world premiere of the DSO-commissioned Year 2020: Concerto for Trumpet, Violin and Orchestra composed by Xi Wang and featuring violinist Karen Gomyo and trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, making her DSO debut (see Oct 12–March 30). [Feb 22, 23, 24, 25: Dallas]

Feb 23–25
Tenor NICHOLAS PHAN joins mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and baritone Luca Pisaroni for concert performances of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with Michael Tilson-Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. [Feb 23, 24, 25: San Francisco]

Feb 23–25
INBAL SEGEV performs Anna Clyne’s cello concerto DANCE with the Colorado Symphony led by MARIN ALSOP (see Nov 2–Feb 25). [Feb 23, 24, 25: Denver]

Feb 23–25
DANIIL TRIFONOV performs Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Susanna Mälkki (see Sep 28–Feb 25). [Feb 23, 24, 25: Los Angeles]

Feb 23–27
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD deconstructs the keyboard fantasy with solo recitals spanning four centuries of music in Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia, where he pairs his performance with a masterclass. It was after a similar exploration of the fantasia form that the San Diego Union Tribune marveled: “There have been few piano recitals this season so thoughtfully curated as the one that Pierre-Laurent Aimard gave. … A fascinating, unforgettable concert.” [Feb 23: Philadelphia; Feb 25: Chicago; Feb 27: San Francisco]

Feb 27
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S performs Carmina Burana in Carnegie Hall, conducted by Tito Muñoz and featuring soprano Ying Fang, tenor NICHOLAS PHAN and baritone Norman Garrett (see Oct 12–May 9). [NYC/CH]

MARCH 2024
March 1–3
Fabio Luisi and the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA present Franz Schmidt’s The Book with Seven Seals to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, also recording the performance for future release. Schmidt wrote four symphonies, two operas and works for piano and organ, but his monumental achievement is this oratorio, of which Luisi is a longtime champion. Soloists are tenor Paul Appleby, bass Franz-Josef Selig, soprano Meghan Kasanders, mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor, tenor Matthew Pearce and bass-baritone Hadleigh Adams, along with the Dallas Symphony Chorus. [March 1, 2, 3: Dallas]

March 1–30
Having worked closely with Messiaen since studying at the Paris Conservatory with Yvonne Loriod, the composer’s wife, PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD has consistently proven himself “one of the best Messiaen interpreters around” (The Guardian). Next spring, the pianist joins the Cincinnati Symphony and Matthias Pintscher for multimedia performances of the great French composer’s Des canyons aux étoiles before heading to Paris for accounts of Messaien’s Oiseaux exotiques with Cristian Măcelaru and the Orchestre national de France. [March 1, 2: Cincinnati; March 30: Paris]

March 2–10
THE ATLANTA OPERA presents Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring the company debut of Grammy-winning countertenor Iestyn Davies – also the recipient of two Gramophone Awards, a Critics Circle Award and an MBE for services to music in the Queen’s New Years Honours List 2017 – as Oberon. His counterpart Tytania will be sung by soprano Liv Redpath. A trio of Atlanta Opera favorites are also featured: mezzo-soprano Megan Marino and bass Kevin Burdette, both of whom appeared as members of The Atlanta Opera’s Company Players at the height of the pandemic, perform the roles of Puck and Bottom, respectively, and soprano Susanne Burgess, most recently seen as Mabel in Pirates of Penzance, sings Helena. Chas Rader-Schieber directs, and rising young conductor Louis Lohraseb will be on the podium. [March 2, 5, 8, 10: Atlanta]

March 8–10
DANIEL HOPE and the New Century Chamber Orchestra perform Haydn’s First Cello Concerto with American cellist Sterling Elliott, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, and works by Gluck and Bloch in San Francisco and Stanford (see Nov 2–5). [March 8, 9: San Francisco; March 10: Stanford, CA]

March 16–21
JULIA BULLOCK – honored by Musical America as a 2021 Artist of the Year and “agent of change” – stars in Dutch National Opera (DNO)’s world premiere production of The Shell Trial, which she created in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Ellen Reid, librettist Roxie Perkins and musical director Manoj Kamps. Commissioned by DNO, where Bullock previously presented her collaboratively created staged song cycle Perle Noir, the new opera was inspired by a 2021 Dutch court case ruling that the Shell company was legally responsible for contributing to climate change. Perkins’s libretto is based on the original play De zaak Shell by Rebekka de Wit and Anoek Nuyens, which premiered in 2020 and caused a stir on the Dutch and international stage. Presenting a range of voices and perspectives in the climate crisis, the complexity of the case becomes increasingly clear during the opera. The boundaries between guilty party and innocent victim, between good and bad, and individual and collective responsibility become blurred as more and more viewpoints are expressed. [March 16, 18, 19, 21: Amsterdam]

March 16–April 18
ALAN GILBERT conducts Wagner’s Parsifal at the Royal Swedish Opera (see Sep 14–Oct 16; March 16–April 18). [March 16, 23, 29; April 1, 13, 18: Stockholm]

March 18
DANIIL TRIFONOV performs his solo recital program of Rameau’s Suite in A minor, Mozart’s Twelfth Piano Sonata, Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses and Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata in Dallas (see Nov 15–March 18). [Dallas]

March 20–April 18
In spring appearances with two important European orchestras, RAFAEL PAYARE continues his exploration of the great tone poems of Richard Strauss. First, he returns to Zurich’s famed Tonhalle Orchestra with a program that includes Ein Heldenleben, which Payare recorded with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra last season for release by Pentatone in 2024. Next he makes his Orchestre national de France debut with Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto, featuring James Ehnes, and the world premiere of a new Radio France commission: Bechara El-Khoury’s Concerto for Orchestra, “Le Mont Hermon, la montagne sacrée.” [March 20, 21: Zurich; April 18: Paris]

March 24
Grammy-winning baritone Will Liverman, star of Terence Blanchard’s 2021-22 season-opening Fire Shut Up in My Bones at the Met, makes his CARAMOOR debut with an intimate recital in the Rosen House Music Room (see Oct 22–May 15). [Katonah, NY]

March 28–30
The DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) under the baton of Music Director Fabio Luisi gives the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s new DSO-commissioned Piano Concerto, performed by soloist Jeremy Denk and sharing the bill with Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor (see Oct 12–March 30). [March 28, 29, 30: Dallas]

APRIL 2024
April 4–6
Principal Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera from 2011-17, DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) Music Director Fabio Luisi is always particularly in his element conducting vocal music. He leads the orchestra along with the Dallas Symphony Chorus in Brahms’s A German Requiem next spring, with soprano Golda Schultz, making her DSO debut, and baritone Matthias Goerne, a frequent DSO collaborator, as soloists. [April 4, 5, 6: Dallas]

April 6
ALISA WEILERSTEIN presents the first installment of her major new multisensory performance series “FRAGMENTS” in Washington, DC (see Nov 5–April 6). [Washington, DC]

April 7, 8
Violinist TESSA LARK, a Kentucky native known for abilities that span the classical and bluegrass traditions, turns her stylistic versatility to Astor Piazzolla’s tango-inflected The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires with the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra led by John Morris Russell. [Hilton Head Island, SC]

April 12–14
MANFRED HONECK returns to the New York Philharmonic for the New York premiere of a new commission from Katherine Balch; Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, featuring Beatrice Rana; and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, as heard on the conductor’s July 2023 References Recordings release with the Pittsburgh Symphony. [April 12, 13, 14: NYC/DGH]

April 19
GATEWAYS MUSIC FESTIVAL presents a performance by the Gateways Festival Orchestra in Chicago’s Symphony Center, led by ANTHONY PARNTHER, who also led the orchestra for its 2022 Carnegie Hall debut. The Gateways Orchestra, founded in 1993, celebrates the contributions of classical musicians of African descent, bringing together professionals from leading U.S. orchestras and conservatory faculties. The ensemble performs a wide repertoire while inspiring communities through the power of music. [Chicago]

April 19–May 4
LEIF OVE ANDSNES performs Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto with two American orchestras next spring, first joining MANFRED HONECK for concerts with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and then collaborating with Lahav Shani and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic, Andsnes’s account of the Russian composer’s first two piano concertos was recognized with a Gramophone Award. [April 19, 21: Pittsburgh; May 3, 4: Philadelphia]

April 20
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (see Sep 23–June 9). [Pittsburgh]

April 23–28
LEIF OVE ANDSNES plays piano quintets by Brahms and Dohnányi with the Grammy-nominated Dover Quartet on a four-city North American tour. After kicking off at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, this takes them to San Francisco, Toronto and Aliso Viejo, CA, where Andsnes also performs selections from Brahms’s Fantasies for solo piano. [April 23: Washington, DC; April 25: San Francisco; April 26: Aliso Viejo, CA; April 28: Toronto]

April 23–May 17
MARIN ALSOP makes her Metropolitan Opera debut leading a fully staged new production of John Adams’s Christmas oratorio, El Niño. Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, this stars JULIA BULLOCK and baritone Davóne Tines, both also making company debuts, and mezzo-sopranos J’Nai Bridges and Daniela Mack, who take turns to complete the trio of principals. Alsop enjoys a long association with Adams, who composed his Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance as a farewell gift to the conductor after her unprecedented 25-year tenure as Music Director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (see Nov 30; Dec 11–21 for more information about El Niño). [April 23, 27; May 1, 4, 8, 11, 17: NYC/Met]

April 25–28
Tenor NICHOLAS PHAN sings Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Boston Baroque and its Music Director, Martin Pearlman. Directed by Chuck Hudson, the staged production also features Sidney Outlaw and Susanna Phillips. [April 25, 26, 28: Boston]

April 25–30
Combining popular music and classical rarities from Europe before World War I, DANIEL HOPE’s Belle Époque was hailed as “an ingenious, gorgeous concept album” (Telegraph, UK). Next spring, the violinist reunites with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips, his partner on the recording, for recitals of similar repertoire in St. Paul’s Schubert Club International Artist Series and at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, where their program also includes the U.S. premiere of Fantasy Suite 1803 by Jake Heggie. [April 25, 26: St. Paul, MN; April 30: San Francisco]

April 26, 27
Chief Conductor ALAN GILBERT leads the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in concerts launching the 2024 Hamburg International Music Festival. In keeping with the festival’s theme of “War and Peace,” their program features baritone Thomas Hampson in Four Walt Whitman Songs – Kurt Weill’s post-Pearl Harbor setting of four of Whitman’s Civil War poems – alongside Gilbert’s celebrated interpretation of Ives’s Fourth Symphony and Friede auf Erden (“Peace on Earth”), a choral work by Schoenberg, whose 150th anniversary falls next year. [Hamburg]

April 26–28
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO)’s world premiere performances of a new PSO commission from Samy Moussa, alongside Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony (see Sep 23–June 9). [April 26, 27, 28: Pittsburgh]

April 27
Teddy Abrams and the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA present Mahler’s tempestuous Symphony No. 6 – subtitled “Tragic,” though apparently not by the composer. Written at a notably happy time in Mahler’s life, the symphony nonetheless lives up to its nickname, especially in the final movement, which features the notorious “Mahler hammer” in the percussion section. The work will also be performed the previous day in the 11am “Coffee Series.” [Louisville]

April 27–May 5
THE ATLANTA OPERA returns to Wagner’s Ring cycle with a new production of Die Walküre directed by General and Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun. Greer Grimsley reprises his role as Wotan after making his company debut in 2022-23’s Das Rheingold, joined by the “big, radiant voice” (Seattle Times) of Wendy Bryn Harmer as Brünnhilde and Russian-American tenor Viktor Antipenko as Siegmund. Both Harmer and Antipenko will be making company debuts. As with Rheingold, this new Atlanta Opera production is directed by Zvulun in collaboration with scenic and projections designer Erhard Rom and lighting designer Robert Wierzel, with costumes by European Opera Prize-winner Mattie Ullrich. The Atlanta Opera’s Carl & Sally Gable music director, Arthur Fagen, will conduct. [April 27, 30; May 3, 5: Atlanta]

April 28
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD performs selections from Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata at Paris’s Thêatre des Champs-Elysées (see Sep 29–April 28). [Paris]

MAY 2024
May 1–5
Beginning in May 2024, the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) and Fabio Luisi will present an opera-in-concert version of Richard Wagner’s complete Der Ring des Nibelungen, becoming the first U.S. orchestra in recent history to do so. The project debuts on May 1, with Das Rheingold and Die Walküre premiering on consecutive nights. Bass-baritone Mark Delavan sings the role of Wotan, with soprano Sara Jakubiak and tenor Christopher Ventris – both making their DSO debuts – portraying Sieglinde and Siegmund respectively. The cycle continues in fall 2024 with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, followed by a week-long presentation of the full cycle. Luisi received his first Grammy Award for his leadership of the last two operas of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen with the Metropolitan Opera. The Deutsche Grammophon DVD release of the full cycle, recorded live, was named Best Opera Recording of 2012. [Das Rheingold, May 1, 4; Die Walküre, May 2, 5: Dallas]

May 2–4
MANFRED HONECK returns to the Kennedy Center for a program of Bruckner and Beethoven with the National Symphony Orchestra. Violinist Nurit Bar-Josef is the soloist in Beethoven’s first and second Romances, and the concert concludes with Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, of which the conductor’s recording was recognized with three 2020 Grammy nominations. [May 2, 3, 4: Washington, DC]

May 7
Cellist ALISA WEILERSTEIN, an ardent champion of new music whose composer-collaborators have included Pascal Dusapin, Matthias Pintscher, Joseph Hallman, Lera Auerbach and Osvaldo Golijov, joins percussion ensemble Sandbox at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to play Tan Dun’s Elegy: Snow in June for Cello and Percussion Quartet. [NYC/ATH]

May 9
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S, led by Principal Conductor Bernard Labadie, performs an all-Brahms program centered on A German Requiem and featuring soprano Erin Morley, baritone Andrè Schuen, La Chapelle de Québec and the Handel and Haydn Society Chorus (see Oct 12–May 9). [NYC/CH]

May 11
Teddy Abrams and the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA present “Creators Fest,” spotlighting the three inaugural members of the orchestra’s groundbreaking Creators Corps initiative, a radically new, community-focused model for collaborating with symphony orchestras in the 21st century. This musical finale of the second year of the unique program sees performances of large-scale commissioned works by all three composers: Lisa Bielawa, TJ Cole and Tyler Taylor. [Louisville]

May 15
Pianist Seong-Jin Cho, first-prize winner at the 2015 Chopin International Competition, plays a program of Haydn, Ravel and Liszt in the intimate surroundings of CARAMOOR’s Rosen House Music Room (see Oct 22–May 15). [Katonah, NY]

May 28–30
Music Director RAFAEL PAYARE draws the MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (OSM)’s 90th anniversary season to a close with a program showcasing four renowned organists at the helm of OSM’s Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique. To honor the instrument’s tenth anniversary, OSM organist-in-residence Jean-Willy Kunz joins them for the world premiere of a new OSM commission from Quebec composer Denis Gougeon; Shin-Young Lee undertakes the solo role in Barber’s Toccata festiva; Isabelle Demers graces Jongen’s Symphonie concertante; and OSM organist emeritus Olivier Latry is the soloist in Saint-Saëns’s “Organ Symphony,” a crown jewel of the orchestral organ repertoire. [May 28, 29, 30: Montreal]

May 30
To conclude his year-long tenure as 2023-24 Artist-in-Residence of New York’s Kaufman Music Center, tenor NICHOLAS PHAN gives a recital with pianist Myra Huang and the Jasper String Quartet. His program features the world premiere of a new song cycle about climate change by Vivian Fung. [NYC/KMC]

May 30–June 1
MANFRED HONECK returns to the CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (CSO) for the world premiere of a new Percussion Concerto, commissioned by the orchestra from the CSO’s Mead Composer-in-Residence Jessie Montgomery. Featuring CSO Principal Percussionist Cynthia Yeh, this will share the program with Honeck’s celebrated interpretation of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. [May 30, 31; June 1: Chicago]

JUNE 2024
June 2–9
Grammy-winning vocal ensemble CHANTICLEER presents an early-music program focused on French composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame. One of the leading minds of the Middle Ages, Machaut created with this masterpiece one of the first multi-movement, large-scale notated compositions to exist in the Western canon; the LA Times has called it the “genesis of modern music.” Sharing the program with Machaut’s magnum opus are secular songs of minstrels and bards from the Middle Ages. [June 2: Sacramento, CA; June 7: San Francisco; June 8: Santa Clara, CA; June 9: Berkeley, CA]

June 7–9
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO)’s world premiere performances of Double Concerto for Oboe and Horn by Michael Daugherty, a new PSO commission, on a program with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (see Sep 23–June 9). [June 7, 8, 9: Pittsburgh]

June 7, 14
MARIN ALSOP returns to the podiums of two great European orchestras for evenings bookended by Jessie Montgomery’s Strum and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. With the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris, these works flank Gershwin’s Piano Concerto, featuring Marc-André Hamelin as soloist, and with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Alsop completes the program with Fearful Symmetries by John Adams, with whose El Niño she makes her Met debut earlier in the spring. [June 7: Paris; June 14: Amsterdam]

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Abbreviations for New York City concert venues are as follows:
ABC = Abyssinian Baptist Church
ATH = Alice Tully Hall
CH = Carnegie Hall
DGH = David Geffen Hall
KMC = Kaufman Music Center
Met = Metropolitan Opera
PAA = Park Avenue Armory
St. I = St. Ignatius
St. P & St. A = St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church