21C MEDIA GROUP’S CLASSICAL MUSIC SPRING PREVIEW
CONCERTS, SPECIAL EVENTS & RECORDINGS
Feb 17 through June 30, 2023
21C’s artists and organizations offer a full lineup of performances and recordings this spring; for upcoming highlights, see below. Please note that all dates, artists and programs are still subject to change and to new or ongoing Covid restrictions.
FEBRUARY 2023
Feb 17–19
“A brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (Wall Street Journal), Grammy-winning French pianist PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD performs and records Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. Aimard enjoys a close and longstanding artistic partnership with the Finnish conductor, highlighted by “Salonen/Aimard: Inspirations,” their celebrated 2017 series at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The upcoming concerts complete their Bartók concerto cycle, which is being captured for future release by Pentatone. [Feb 17, 18, 19: San Francisco]
Feb 18
Known for his “charismatic, captivating conducting” (Los Angeles Times), ANTHONY PARNTHER is now in his third season as Music & Artistic Director of California’s San Bernardino Symphony. He leads the orchestra in performances of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers and Mozart’s 20th Piano Concerto, for which they will be joined by soloist Dynasty Battles. [San Bernadino, CA]
Feb 20; March [air dates TBC]
Last spring, Celtic Dreams: Daniel Hope’s Hidden Irish History premiered on PBS stations nationwide. Made for ARTE, the TV documentary followed the violinist as he explored Ireland, Irish music and his own family roots. Now he and ARTE continue their collaboration with Hope on the Road – Visiting Hollywood, a new documentary about the composers who fled Nazi Germany for Los Angeles, where they helped create the classic Hollywood Sound. As well as interviewing survivors and their heirs, including the son and daughter-in-law of Schoenberg, and Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, Hope interviews some of today’s most prolific film composers, Thomas Newman and Benjamin Wallfisch among them. Also featuring a performance at LA’s Thomas Mann House, the former residence of the late, exiled, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, the documentary was filmed last fall for future release. A preview will be screened during the Berlinale Film Festival’s Trade Fair, Avant Premiere on February 20.
Feb 22–24
A cellist known for her “stylistic sensitivity, verve and spontaneous delight in discovery” (The Guardian), ALISA WEILERSTEIN gives three performances of Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante with the New York Philharmonic and Nathalie Stutzmann, new Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony. [Feb 22, 23, 24: NYC/DGH]
Feb 23–25
MacArthur award-winning conductor MARIN ALSOP leads the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA in concerts featuring Antrópolis (2019) by Mexican composer and Guggenheim Fellow Gabriela Ortiz and the First Piano Concerto (“Latin”) by Latin Grammy-winning Venezuelan pianist-composer Gabriela Montero, who also joins the orchestra as soloist. A leading “ambassador for classical music in the 21st century” (Financial Times), Alsop consistently uses her platform to amplify the voices of women and people of color. [Feb 23, 24, 25: Dallas]
Feb 23–25
Grammy-winning American conductor ALAN GILBERT returns to the podium of the Berlin Philharmonic, whose “musicians have faith in him, letting him unleash his creativity to the fullest” (Berlin Morgenpost). In the orchestra’s 2023 Biennial (an exploration of the mid-20th-century), he leads three works that engage with music of the past. Boris Blacher takes one of the violin literature’s most famous themes as the point of departure for his jazzy, virtuosic Paganini Variations; Dutilleux reimagines the Baroque concerto grosso in his Second Symphony; and Barber puts an American spin on the Romantic violin concerto in his own contribution to the genre, for which Gilbert and the orchestra will be joined by Joshua Bell. Also an accomplished violinist, Gilbert completes his Biennial residency with a late-night performance of Ligeti’s Horn Trio, with Stefan Dohr on French horn and Kirill Gerstein at the piano. [Feb 23, 24, 25 eve. & late: Berlin]
Feb 25
INBAL SEGEV, characterized by Gramophone as “a cellist with something to say” and noted by the Washington Post for her “thrillingly projected, vibrato-rich playing,” joins the Illinois Philharmonic and conductor Stilian Kirov for the Midwest premiere of Vijay Iyer’s cello concerto, Human Archipelago. Iyer explains: “Human Archipelago addresses the entangled processes of climate change & migration and the societal imbalances that are both their cause and their result. The piece is intended to take the performers to a point of vulnerability and the brink of possibility that brings the music to life and expresses human inter-reliance.” [Palos Heights, IL]
Feb 26
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD performs fantasias by Sweelinck, C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Volkonsky and George Benjamin at California’s La Jolla Music Society. Spanning more than 350 years of music, the pianist’s thoughtfully curated program explores the fantasia, a genre whose improvisatory roots let its composers’ imaginations run free. [La Jolla, CA])
Feb 26
Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award- and Avery Fisher Career Grant-recipient Alexi Kenney makes his CAL PERFORMANCES debut with “Shifting Ground,” a solo recital program for violin. Putting selections from Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas in conversation with the California premieres of new works by Salina Fisher, Angélica Negrón and Paul Wiancko, as well as contemporary music by Samuel Adams, Matthew Burtner, Giuseppe Colombi, Reena Esmail, Nicola Matteis and Du Yun, the program and its title celebrate the ground bass composition technique on which so much Baroque music is founded. [Berkeley, CA]
Feb 28; March 2; April 4
Superstar duo DANIIL TRIFONOV and Joshua Bell team up for recitals in Carnegie Hall, at the Chicago Symphony Center and in Boston’s Celebrity Series. Their repertoire comprises three violin sonatas: Beethoven’s Op. 12, No. 1, Prokofiev’s brooding Sonata No. 1 in F minor, and Franck’s Sonata in A major. [Feb 28: NYC/CH; March 2: Chicago; April 4: Boston]
MARCH 2023
March 3
As a high point of the ongoing partnership between Michigan’s INTERLOCHEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS and the New York Philharmonic, the young musicians of the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra give a side-by-side performance with members of the New York Philharmonic at New York’s Lincoln Center. Celebrating international liberation movements throughout history with a special focus on the Black experience, their program will feature the announcement of the inaugural class of NY Phil Interlochen Scholars: 30 New York youths who have been chosen to attend Interlochen Arts Camp on full-tuition scholarships next summer. The concert will be led by Interlochen’s Dr. Leslie B. Dunner at David Geffen Hall, where the Interlochen Arts Academy will become one of the first visiting institutions to appear since the renovated venue’s reopening in fall 2022. [NYC/DGH]
March 3; March 6–9
Marking its first U.S. appearances under the leadership of new Music Director RAFAEL PAYARE, the MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA returns to New York’s Carnegie Hall and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center for performances of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Dorothy Chang’s Precipice and Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto. Their soloist is Yefim Bronfman, with whom they reprise the same program back in Montreal. Mahler’s monumental Fifth is also the subject of the orchestra’s first recording with Payare, due for physical and digital release by Pentatone. Payare’s approach to the Fifth has been called “riveting celebration” (Los Angeles Times), and he and the Montreal Symphony inaugurated their partnership last fall with a live account of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony that was hailed “as a major milestone in the history of the OSM” (Le Devoir, Canada). [March 3: album release; March 6: Washington, DC; March 8: NYC/CH; March 9: Montreal]
March 3–May 8
Cellist INBAL SEGEV continues a series of performances around the world in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the TAKI ALSOP CONDUCTING FELLOWSHIP. Each performance is anchored by Anna Clyne’s DANCE, a cello concerto commissioned by Segev and recorded in 2020. The “hugely impressive” (The Guardian) recording on the Avie label has subsequently been played more than eight million times on Spotify. She performs the work with four more orchestras this spring: Philadelphia’s Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, the Hartford Symphony, the Reno Philharmonic, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. [March 3: Philadelphia; March 10-12: Hartford, CT; March 25, 26: Reno, NV; May 6, 8: Chicago]
March 4, 11
After celebrating Latin America in last season’s Festival of American Music, Teddy Abrams and the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA take on two subjects that transcend national boundaries altogether in “Journeys of Faith” and “The Literary Influence.” Both performances in the 2023 festival feature world premiere commissions from members of the new “Creators Corps” initiative: the first program includes TJ Cole’s concerto for synthesizer and orchestra titled Phenomenal of the Earth, with the composer as soloist, and the second includes Tyler Taylor’s Revisions. Both programs also include symphonies by Leonard Bernstein. For the “Journeys of Faith” program, Bernstein’s Third Symphony, “Kaddish,” a tribute to John F. Kennedy, is performed along with Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth’s Masaot/Clocks Without Hands, a tribute to her multi-ethnic grandfather and exploration of her own faith and identity. For the second concert, “The Literary Influence,” Bernstein’s Second Symphony, “The Age of Anxiety,” titled after a book-length poem by W. H. Auden and featuring piano soloist Sebastian Chang, is complemented by Emmy Award-winning composer Joel Thompson’s To Awaken the Sleeper, a cry for justice based on the words of essayist, novelist and civil rights activist James Baldwin. [March 4, 11: Louisville]
March 5; May 17
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD returns to the Paris Philharmonie for a complete traversal of Ligeti’s Études at the venue’s “LIGETI 100 WEEKEND,” before joining jazz
pianist Michael Wollny at the Berlin Philharmonie for an improvisatory take on the Études titled “Ligeti 100: A Musical Bow in Dialogues.” Ligeti considered Aimard “today’s leading interpreter of contemporary piano music,” and the two shared an intimate working relationship until the Hungarian composer’s death. Aimard is the dedicatee of several Études, of which his complete Sony Masterworks recording was recognized with a
Gramophone Award. [March 5: Paris; May 17: Berlin]
March 9–13
American classical singer JULIA BULLOCK returns to Dutch National Opera for a performance of the staged song cycle Perle Noire, which she created in collaboration with composer Tyshawn Sorey and director Peter Sellars. The cycle shines a light on the complex life behind the mask of international superstar Josephine Baker. Bullock and Sorey chose to set Perle Noire as a layered interplay of song, poetry, instrumental interludes, improvisation, and elements of music from Baker’s native country, such as the Charleston. [March 9, 11, 13: Amsterdam]
March 10
Pianist Yuja Wang releases The American Project on Deutsche Grammophon, featuring a new concerto written for her by Teddy Abrams and performed with the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA that marks the orchestra’s label debut. Originally meant to be a companion to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the work blossomed into a 35-minute standalone showpiece.
March 10–14; April 1
In January, ALISA WEILERSTEIN gave the world premiere of the first two installments of her new solo cello series, “FRAGMENTS”, in Toronto. In March and April, she takes both programs on a U.S. tour that culminates with the New York premiere of “FRAGMENTS 1” at Carnegie Hall. Within each “FRAGMENTS” program, she weaves together new commissions from a diverse array of composers with individual movements from a single Bach suite to make a wholly original emotional arc. Enhanced by responsive lighting and scenic architecture, the music is performed without pauses or printed program details, creating an atmosphere of enchantment, adventure, and discovery. [March 10: Santa Barbara, CA; March 12: Irvine, CA; March 14: La Jolla, CA; April 1: NYC/CH]
March 11, 24
ANTHONY PARNTHER conducts Ludwig Göransson’s Academy Award-winning score to Black Panther at live screenings of the Marvel Studios movie with the Rochester Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony. It was Parnther who led last fall’s celebrated live screening of the film with the Atlanta Symphony. [March 11: Rochester, NY; March 24: San Francisco]
March 16–18
In his third season as Music Director of the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, Grammy-winning conductor Fabio Luisi conducts live accounts of Brahms’s Third Symphony that will be recorded for future physical and digital release on the orchestra’s house label, DSO Live, as part of their upcoming Brahms cycle (see also May 4-7). The program will also be available for video streaming on the orchestra’s Next Stage platform. When Luisi led the London Symphony Orchestra in Brahms’s Second Symphony, Bachtrack reported: “He was majestic and dynamic on the podium and his enthusiasm was infectious …, but it was his sensitive and thoughtful shaping of the piece that was most impressive. … Luisi controlled events masterfully, building up the tension and powering through to the thrilling climax with a triumphant flourish.” [March 16, 17, 18: Dallas]
March 17–19
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony in his own signature dramatic treatment of Mozart’s Requiem, which will be recorded for future CD release. A profound meditation on the composer, his passing, faith, tradition, and the nature of death itself, “Requiem: Mozart’s Death in Words and Music” will feature thoughtfully chosen letters and poetry narrated by F. Murray Abraham, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus and currently stars in HBO’s The White Lotus; vocal soloists Jeanine De Bique, Catriona Morison and Tareq Nazmi in their Pittsburgh debuts; and the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh. Also on the program are Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony and the world premiere of James MacMillan’s Her tears fell with the dews at even, a Pittsburgh Symphony commission. [March 17, 18, 19: Pittsburgh]
March 17–21
Celebrating the depth and diversity of its hometown’s remarkable choral ensembles, Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble CHANTICLEER joins forces with the San Francisco Girls Chorus for “Neighbor Tones,” a concert of new works that will feature the world premiere of a new, extended commission by Chanticleer’s 2022-23 composer-in-residence, Ayanna Woods [March 17: San Francisco; March 18: Berkeley, CA; March 21: Santa Clara, CA]
March 17–April 2
Now in his seventh season as Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, DANIEL HOPE leads the Swiss ensemble from the violin on its upcoming U.S. tour. Repertoire for the tour includes Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, Mendelssohn’s lesser-known D-minor Violin Concerto and Max Richter’s Vivaldi Recomposed, of which Hope’s 2012 recording topped the charts in 22 countries. [March 17: Ann Arbor, MI; March 19: West Palm Beach, FL; March 21: New Brunswick, NJ; March 23: Savannah, GA; March 25: Costa Mesa, CA; March 26: Berkeley, CA; March 29: Lakeview, CT; March 30: Clinton, NY; March 31: Troy, NY; April 2: Fairfax, VA]
March 17–May 6
Exploring the influence of technology on human expression, “Human and Machine” – the
third season of CAL PERFORMANCES’s “Illuminations” series – continues with
three productions this spring. Legendary South African artist William Kentridge ponders the role of algorithms in contemporary life, and the relationship between ancient wisdom and modern data-tracking, in his new chamber opera, Sibyl, which receives its U.S. premiere (March 17–19) as the centerpiece of a campus-wide residency by the acclaimed artist. Composer and producer Michel van der Aa uses video and electronic techniques in his genre-defying chamber opera Blank Out to invoke the textured, fragmented experience of processing personal tragedy and loss (April 28, 29). Finally, the daughter-mother musical team of Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon investigate humanity’s attempts to recover and heal after its dependence on technology goes too far in Parable of the Sower, their operatic adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s dystopian novel (May 5, 6). The “Illuminations” series connects UC Berkeley’s scholarship to the performing arts, and provides a platform for civic engagement, public discourse and social and cultural transformation in its wider community. [March 17, 18, 19; April 28, 29; May 5, 6: Berkeley, CA]
March 20–April 6
A major player on the international opera scene, ALAN GILBERT is now in his second season as Music Director of the Royal Swedish Opera. Recently named Royal Court Kapellmeister, an honorary title conferred by the King of Sweden, Gilbert leads the company in concert performances of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, starring Grammy-winner Anne Sofie von Otter (March 20, 24, 30, April 6), followed by a spring production of Puccini’s Tosca, with Christina Nilsson and Malin Byström taking turns in the title role (March 27, April 3). [Queen of Spades: March 20, 24, 30, April 6; Tosca: March 27, April 3: Stockholm]
March 22–24
“Electrifying Venezuelan conductor” RAFAEL PAYARE (Los Angeles Times) returns to the Munich Philharmonic for a program of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem, Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, featuring Japanese pianist Kyohei Sorita, a top prize-winner at the 2021 Chopin Competition. [March 22, 23, 24: Munich]
March 23–25
NICHOLAS PHAN performs Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the New York Philharmonic led by Music Director Jaap van Zweden. Singing the role of the Evangelist, Phan leads an all-star lineup including bass-baritone Davóne Tines as Christ, soprano Amanda Forsythe, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, tenor Paul Appleby, and bass-baritone Philippe Sly. [March 23, 24, 25: NYC/DGH]
March 24–28
Marking the conductor’s first appearances with the orchestra outside of Dallas, Music Director Fabio Luisi leads the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (DSO) in an upcoming three-city tour of the U.S. East Coast. Concerts will be at Boston’s Symphony Hall, marking the orchestra’s first performance in the famed venue; New York’s Carnegie Hall; and Woolsey Hall on the Yale University Campus in New Haven, Connecticut, and will comprise Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 along with What keeps me awake by DSO composer-in-residence Angélica Negrón. In Boston and New York, pianist Garrick Ohlsson will also join the DSO to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. [March 24: Boston; March 26: NYC/CH; March 28: New Haven, CT]
March 30; April 1, 3
CERISE JACOBS and her activist opera company, WHITE SNAKE PROJECTS, present Fractured Mosaics, an operatic response to the surge in anti-Asian racism. The term “Asian American” is a social and political construct that groups together 20 different ethnic groups originating from more than half the earth’s land mass, loosely bound by skin color but offering a kaleidoscope of divergent cultural and political history. This online presentation features music by Benjamin Kono, Randall Eng, Nilo Alcala, and Liliya Ugay, who, along with four librettists, create operatic scenes of Asian Americans making a home in America. Alternating with the operas are interludes by writer and performer jason chu. [March 30; April 1, 3: online]
March 31; April 1, 2
THE ATLANTA OPERA’s acclaimed Discoveries series continues with The Anonymous Lover, an opera written in 1780 by the groundbreaking Black composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a feature film about whom will be released the following week. Concerning a beautiful young widow who begins receiving love letters from an anonymous source and performed with a 13-piece orchestra, the opera will be staged at Morehouse College, a historically Black men’s liberal arts college, marking the institution’s first opera production. It will also be filmed for future release on The Atlanta Opera’s Spotlight Media platform. [March 31; April 1, 2: Atlanta]
APRIL 2023
April 1
ALISA WEILERSTEIN gives the New York premiere of “FRAGMENTS 1” at Carnegie Hall. (see March 10–14.) [NYC/CH]
April 6–8
RAFAEL PAYARE returns to the Cleveland Orchestra to lead Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, composed at the height of the Stalinist purges, and Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, “The Age of Anxiety,” dating from the early days of the Cold War, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as the piano soloist. Payare debuted with the orchestra at the 2021 Blossom Music Festival, when his account of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony was “ablaze with color” (Cleveland Classical). [April 6, 7, 8: Cleveland]
April 7, 8
Highlighting the MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’s season-long celebration of choral music and connectedness, Canadian maestro and 18th-century specialist Bernard Labadie conducts the orchestra, the OSM Chorus and vocal soloists Miah Persson, Andrew Haji and Matthew Brook in performances of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, widely considered the composer’s crowning masterpiece. [April 7, 8: Montreal]
April 13
ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S and Principal Conductor Bernard Labadie conclude their Carnegie Hall mainstage season with an evening of music for royal occasions by Handel. Combining the composer’s Coronation Anthems and Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne with his beloved Music for the Royal Fireworks, this features three of today’s foremost Handel interpreters – vocal soloists Joélle Harvey, Iestyn Davies and Matthew Brook – with the Baroque specialists of the conductor’s own choir, La Chapelle de Québec. [NYC/CH]
April 13–16
Pianist LEIF OVE ANDSNES – “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight” (New York Times) – joins the Cleveland Orchestra led by Michael Tilson Thomas to perform Debussy’s Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. When the pianist performed the same work with the New York Philharmonic in 2018, the New York Times praised his “easy virtuosity and panache.” [April 13, 15, 16: Cleveland]
April 13–18
DANIIL TRIFONOV returns to Washington, DC to join the National Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Gianandrea Noseda for performances of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in alternation with Scriabin’s sole Piano Concerto at the Kennedy Center. A few days later Trifonov travels with the orchestra to New York, performing the Prokofiev with them in Carnegie Hall. [April 13, 14, 15: Washington, DC; April 18: NYC/CH]
April 16
The MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (OSM) gives the world premiere performance of Ainsi chantait Simorgh by Quebec composer Katia Makdissi-Warren, highlighting “A Journey to the Middle East: Scheherazade to Simurgh.” Led by Solti Prize-winning New Zealand conductor Tianyi Lu in her OSM debut, this evocative celebration of Persian culture also includes Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and the Persian Trilogy by Behzad Ranjbaran. [Montreal]
April 21
Adding to its vast recording catalog, a large proportion of which has been devoted to newly commissioned compositions and arrangements, CHANTICLEER releases a new album on the Platoon label titled On a Clear Day. The album will feature premiere recordings of commissions and arrangements from the past 20 years; artist favorites, such as the Joni Mitchell classic “Both Sides Now;” works by composers with whom the ensemble has maintained long-standing relationships; and pieces representing Chanticleer’s continued effort to explore composers, particularly composers of color, who have not been adequately represented, such as George Walker. The album also has a clear arc from “darkness to light.” Beginning with a sublime, contemplative, and powerful sacred Armenian chant, it moves into the dream world of “Die Lorelei,” “All night” and “Lullaby,” transitions to “The Rewaking,” and concludes with the title track, “On A Clear Day,” arranged by Gene Puerling for Chanticleer in 2000.
April 26, 27
The MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (OSM) gives the world premiere of Melita, a new OSM commission from two-time Juno Award-winning Composer-in-Residence Ana Sokolović. Led by Music Director RAFAEL PAYARE, this shares the program with Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote, featuring cello soloist ALISA WEILERSTEIN, and Cantata criolla by the conductor’s Venezuelan compatriot Antonio Estévez, for which OSM will be joined by tenor Aquiles Machado, baritone Gustavo Castillo and the OSM Chorus. [April 26, 27: Montreal]
April 28, 29
In “Human and Machine” – the third season of CAL PERFORMANCES’s “Illuminations” series – Michel van der Aa’s chamber opera Blank Out uses video and electronics to invoke the experience of processing personal tragedy and loss (see March 17–May 6). [April 28, 29: Berkeley, CA]
April 29
One of the world’s most awe-inspiring natural wonders will serve as the setting for a performance by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, members of the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA (LO), bass-baritone Davóne Tines, the Louisville Chamber Choir and a solo percussionist, all led by LO Music Director and Musical America 2022 “Conductor of the Year” Teddy Abrams. The musical forces assemble at Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park for two immersive concerts at 11am and 3pm CDT, directed by Zack Winokur and featuring a new composition by Abrams himself, inspired by the environment in which it will be performed. [Mammoth Cave, KY]
PLEASE NOTE: Tickets for the event have already been distributed through a lottery; however, a limited number of press tickets are still available.
April 29; May 2–7
THE ATLANTA OPERA closes its mainstage 2022-23 season with a milestone event: General and Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun’s new production of Das Rheingold, the company’s first production of any opera from Wagner’s monumental Ring Cycle. The major new production sees Zvulun reunite with scenic and projections designer Erhard Rom and lighting designer Robert Wierzel, with costumes by European Opera Prize-winner Mattie Ullrich. The same production under Zvulun’s direction will premiere at Dallas Opera in February. Bass-baritone Greer Grimsley, in his house debut as Wotan, will be joined by mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong in her role debut as Fricka, veteran Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson as Fasolt, and Zachary Nelson in his role debut as Alberich. Arthur Fagen, longtime music director of The Atlanta Opera, will conduct. The production will be filmed for future release on The Atlanta Opera’s Spotlight Media platform. [April 29; May 2, 5, 7: Atlanta]
MAY 2023
May 4, 6
ALISA WEILERSTEIN plays Barber’s Cello Concerto under Franz Welser-Möst with the Cleveland Orchestra, with which she made her professional concert debut at 13 in 1995.
[May 4, 6: Cleveland]May 4–7
Music Director Fabio Luisi conducts Brahms’s Fourth (and final) Symphony with the DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, in performances that will be recorded for future release as the final installment of their upcoming Brahms cycle on DSO Live. Also on the program, the DSO welcomes Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi as soloist in Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, as well as Colombian singer Lido Pimienta for the world premiere of Arquitecta, a new commission from DSO composer-in-residence and 2022 Hermitage Greenfield Prize winner Angélica Negrón. [May 4, 5, 6, 7: Dallas]
May 5, 6
In “Human and Machine” – the third season of CAL PERFORMANCES’s “Illuminations” series – Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s Parable of the Sower offers an operatic adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s dystopian novel (see March 17–May 6). [May 5, 6: Berkeley, CA]
May 5–10
JULIA BULLOCK – declared by the New York Times to be “one of the singular artists of her generation – a singer of enveloping tone, startlingly mature presence and unusually sophisticated insight into culture, society and history” – performs Messiaen’s twelve-part song cycle, Harawi, with the American Modern Opera Company in Germany and Belgium. A Peruvian version of the Tristan myth, Harawi was composed in 1945, inspired by the traditional music of the Andes. In the Inca kingdom, “harawi” were emotional songs about tragic love and death, accompanied by flute sounds, and Messiaen, using his own inimitable tonal language, combined that genre with Richard Wagner’s great opera about the impossible love between the knight Tristan and the princess Isolde. The American Modern Opera Company’s staged production, under the direction of Zack Winokur, also features pianist Conor Hanick and choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber. [May 5: Antwerp; May 7: Leverkusen, Germany; May 10: Hamburg]
May 7, 8
CERISE JACOBS and her activist opera company, WHITE SNAKE PROJECTS, present “Opera Through the Looking Glass: Così! Men Are Like That.” A new series focusing on the often problematic, bizarre and murderous depictions of women and other marginalized people in canonical works, “Opera Through the Looking Glass” turns these stories on their heads to ask if beautiful music is enough to justify their continued status. Commissioned and designed to be performed in non-traditional spaces, the reconceived pieces are each 60 minutes long, filled with opera’s greatest hits and sung in English. This first program focuses on Così fan tutte, reimagined by composer Ryan Oldham, and will be performed three times over two days at La Voile restaurant in Brookline, MA. [May 7, 8: Brookline, MA]
May 11–13
RAFAEL PAYARE makes his previously postponed San Francisco Symphony debut with a program of Still’s Darker America, Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Brahms’s Violin Concerto, for which he and the orchestra will be joined by Grammy-winning violinist Hilary Hahn. [May 11, 12, 13: San Francisco]
May 11–14
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD plays Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the LA Philharmonic and Eva Ollikainen, Chief Conductor of the Iceland Symphony. A leading exponent of the core piano repertoire, Aimard won a Gramophone Award for his recording of Beethoven’s complete piano concertos with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. [May 11, 13, 14: Los Angeles]
May 11–14
DANIEL HOPE and the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO) present their fourth and final set of concerts for the season before setting off on their second European tour, with a program titled “Points of Origin.” Two works explore America’s identity as a melting pot: Jessie Montgomery’s Banner, a reimagining of the U.S. national anthem; and the world premiere of the orchestral version of Nico Muhly’s Stranger (co-commissioned by NCCO and Palaver Strings), a song cycle performed by tenor NICHOLAS PHAN that reflects on the American immigrant experience. The world premiere of a new work by British composer Hannah Kendall is also on the program, as well as tributes to their predecessors by two 20th-century British composers: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Benjamin Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. For the San Diego performance, the Vaughan Williams, Kendall and Muhly works will be replaced by Max Richter’s Vivaldi Recomposed. [May 11: Berkeley, CA; May 12: San Diego, CA; May 13: San Francisco; May 14: San Rafael, CA]
May 11–16
The CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA conducted by Riccardo Muti celebrates Rachmaninoff’s sesquicentennial with a performance of his Second Symphony, along with the world premiere of a CSO-commissioned work by Mead Composer-in-Residence Jessie Montgomery, who writes with “a Technicolor brilliance and harmonic plushness perfect for the CSO’s own heart-on-its-sleeve proclivities” (Chicago Tribune). Wagner’s Overture to Tannhäuser opens the concert. [May 11, 12, 13, 16: Chicago]
May 13
Music Director Teddy Abrams and the LOUISVILLE ORCHESTRA perform Bruckner’s monumental Symphony No. 7, bringing the work back to Louisville for the first time in decades. Inspired by the epic scale of Wagner’s operas, Bruckner created a style of symphonic composition all his own, recognizably in a 19th-century idiom but unique in what the New Grove Dictionary calls the “absolute originality of its formal processes.” Opening the program is the world premiere of a Louisville Orchestra co-commission from Rome Prize-winner Christopher Cerrone reflecting on the COVID lockdown, titled A Year of Silence, featuring two-time Grammy-winning bass-baritone Dashon Burton. [Louisville]
May 13–June 8
ALAN GILBERT draws his second Royal Swedish Opera season to a close with Richard Strauss’s powerful yet unsettling Salome, starring Elisabet Strid and Łukasz Goliński in the Sofia Jupither production that prompted Sweden’s Expressen to declare: “It doesn’t get any better than this!” [May 13, 18, 31, June 3, 8: Stockholm]
May 17
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD joins jazz pianist Michael Wollny at the Berlin Philharmonie for an improvisatory take on Ligeti’s Études titled “Ligeti 100: A Musical Bow in Dialogues.” (see March 5). [Berlin]
May 19–28
Now nearing the end of his fourth season as Chief Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, ALAN GILBERT leads the NDR at the 2023 Hamburg International Music Festival. Their programs are both inspired by this season’s theme of “Love.” First, Gilbert conducts Schoenberg’s symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande, a setting of Maeterlinck’s doomed love story, alongside Ligeti’s Apparitions and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, with Grammy-winner Augustin Hadelich as soloist (May 19, 20). Next Gilbert helms two concert performances of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, starring Kevin Short, Adrienne Danrich, Chauncey Packer and Nicole Cabell. Gilbert and the NDR recently won accolades in the Lucerne Festival’s first production of the opera, and his leadership of a new Porgy and Bess at La Scala scored a five-star review in the Financial Times (May 26, 28). [May 19, 20, 26, 28: Hamburg]
May 20–27
“One of America’s best-kept secrets” (Fanfare), the SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY (SDSO) and Music Director RAFAEL PAYARE conclude their fourth season together with a pair of programs at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, the orchestra’s stunning bayside, open-air venue. As one of the first six participants in the League of American Orchestras’ Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program for female composers, SDSO gives the world premiere of a new commission from award-winning composer Gity Razaz. Led by Payare, this shares the program with Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with Inon Barnatan, “one of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), and Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony (May 20, 21). Finally, the conductor and orchestra join the San Diego Master Chorale for accounts of Antonio Estévez’s vividly cinematic Cantata criolla (May 26, 27). [May 20, 21, 26, 27: San Diego, CA]
May 25–27
MARIN ALSOP returns to the New York Philharmonic for a program combining the Suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Chick Corea’s Trombone Concerto, and Barber’s First Symphony. Alsop’s recording of Barber’s single-movement symphony – made 23 years ago on her first Naxos album – is still regarded as definitive, being recently described as “a must-have” by San Francisco Classical Voice. [May 25, 26, 27: NYC/DGH]
May 31; June 2, 3
For their season-closing concerts, the MONTREAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA and RAFAEL PAYARE perform Mahler’s longest and most life-affirming symphony – his Third – with American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as soloist. [May 31; June 2, 3: Montreal]
JUNE 2023
June 1–3
Conductor MANFRED HONECK returns to the San Francisco Symphony for a program that includes pianist Beatrice Rana performing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the San Francisco Symphony premiere of Gloria Isabel Ramos Triano’s amazon, and Schubert’s Symphony in C major, “The Great.” [June 1, 2, 3: San Francisco]
June 6–20
In June, ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S (OSL) returns to Carnegie’s Zankel Hall to celebrate J.S. Bach’s musical legacy with its annual OSL Bach Festival. The first program features pianist Jeremy Denk, “an artist you want to hear no matter what he performs” (New York Times), playing and directing six of Bach’s keyboard concertos (June 6). OSL Principal Conductor Bernard Labadie leads the other two programs. The first, “Suites and Concertos,” comprises violin concertos and orchestral suites in the French Baroque style. Violinist Gil Shaham – declared by the New York Times to be “a virtuoso and a player of deeply intense sincerity” and by The Guardian “among the most inspired violinists of his generation” – joins Labadie and OSL for the performance (June 13). The festival closes with “The Baroque Voice.” Countertenor Hugh Cutting, a rising international star who made his Carnegie Hall debut in OSL’s St. Matthew Passion last season, returns as featured artist, singing Bach’s fervent and dramatic Cantata 170 and virtuoso opera arias by George Frideric Handel (June 20). [June 6, 13, 20: NYC/CH]
June 7–11
With candlelight and incense, CHANTICLEER marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, one of the finest composers of the Renaissance, with a program titled “Music for a Hidden Chapel.” As a Catholic composer writing for a Protestant Queen, Byrd’s music tiptoes the line between submission and defiance, offering listeners a mix of meditative chant and soaring polyphony sure to transport and enthrall. [June 7: Belvedere, CA; June 8: Santa Clara, CA; June 10: San Francisco; June 11: Sacramento, CA]
June 9–11
Music Director MANFRED HONECK leads the Pittsburgh Symphony in a special performance that includes a collaboration with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and two world premieres. Ravel’s Boléro, choreographed by Pittsburgh Ballet Artistic Director Susan Jaffe – recently announced as the next Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre – is just one of the highlights of the ambitious program. Also included is the return of pianist Igor Levit in Gershwin’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in F and two world premieres of Pittsburgh Symphony commissions: a new work by Stacy Garrop and a new arrangement of music from Richard Strauss’s opera Salome by Honeck and Tomáš Ille. [June 9, 10, 11: Pittsburgh]
June 15, 17
To conclude her U.S. subscription season, MARIN ALSOP returns to the Seattle Symphony, where she pairs the Suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet with Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems for Six Singers and Orchestra by her former mentor Leonard Bernstein. Alsop is one of the foremost exponents of the American composer’s music, and her recordings of his orchestral works feature a number of “definitive performances” (New York Times), “some of which seem better than the composer’s own” (San Francisco Classical Voice). [June 15, 17: Seattle]
June 23–25
Riccardo Muti leads the CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA and soloists soprano Erin Morley, mezzo-soprano Alisa Kolosova, tenor Giovanni Sala and bass Ildar Abdrazakov, along with the Chicago Symphony Chorus, in a performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. [June 23, 24, 25: Chicago]
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Abbreviations for New York City concert venues are as follows:
CH = Carnegie Hall
DGH = David Geffen Hall