Fabio Luisi Conducts Mahler 8, Nielsen and Schmidt with Danish National Symphony, Two New Productions at Zurich Opera, World Premiere of His Saint Bonaventure Mass in 2017-18
This fall, Grammy and ECHO Klassik Award-winning conductor Fabio Luisi launches his second season as the new Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (DNSO), and his sixth as General Director of Zurich Opera, which was named Best Opera Company at the 2014 International Opera Awards. In Copenhagen he opens the season with Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, and subsequent concerts throughout the season include Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony paired with Hans Werner Henze’s Second Violin Concerto; Franz Schmidt’s oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln; and concerts featuring Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. He also acts as Jury Chairman for the DNSO’s Malko Competition for Young Conductors. At Zurich Opera, meanwhile, Luisi leads two new productions this season: Weill and Brecht’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny and Verdi’s La forza del destino, as well as conducting Philharmonia Zurich in concert performances of works by Dvořák, Bruckner, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky in Zurich and on a four-city tour of Spain. Luisi is also an accomplished composer whose Saint Bonaventure Mass receives its world premiere this fall at New York’s St. Bonaventure University, followed two days later by its New York City premiere in the MetLiveArts series. Rounding out the conductor’s season are a production of Falstaff at Opera de Paris; a new production of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini at La Scala; and guest appearances with Beijing’s China NCPA Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Dallas Symphony. Finally, Luisi conducts a pair of concerts with the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the resident orchestra of Florence’s Opera di Firenze, where he has been named the new Music Director starting in the spring of 2018.
When Luisi made his debut with the DNSO in 2010, the concert was pronounced “one of the most wonderful in the orchestra’s history” (Berlingske). Last season, inaugurating his new post, he focused on Mahler’s symphonies, conducting the Ninth, Seventh and First (“Titan”) over the course of the season. The “Titan” Symphony was also on the program for the orchestra’s spring tour to the U.S., when San Jose’s Mercury News declared, “He didn’t disappoint. Luisi … is a precise, energetic conductor, and he led his Danish players in vibrant, dynamic performances.” To open his second season as Principal Conductor, Luisi continues the trend with Mahler’s monumental Eighth Symphony. Also known as the “Symphony of a Thousand,” the work is one of the largest-scale in the classical repertoire, requiring huge instrumental forces as well as two SATB choirs, children’s choir and eight soloists.
A week after the season-opener, Luisi gives his first performance of Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony with the DNSO, along with Hans Werner Henze’s Second Violin Concerto featuring German violinist Julia Fischer as soloist. Nielsen’s music has already garnered raves for both orchestra and conductor; his Helios Overture was another of the works performed on last spring’s U.S. tour, and his Second Symphony (“The Four Temperaments”) “in Luisi’s hands, was a riot of invention” (London Evening Standard) when the DNSO performed the piece at the BBC Proms. Click here to hear the details of Luisi’s love affair with Carl Nielsen.
Later in the season Luisi leads Franz Schmidt’s mammoth apocalyptic oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln; a concert pairing Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony with Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and the Strauss horn concerto played by Lasse Mauritzen, first principal solo horn with the DNSO; and another pairing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with Guo Wenjing’s Rite of Mountains, featuring renowned Chinese percussionist Li Biao. In April Luisi leads the orchestra in Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony as a prelude to the DNSO’s Malko Competition for Young Conductors, which has been held every three years since 1965. The competition is named after Nicolai Malko, who in 1930 was named the DNSO’s first permanent conductor. Luisi also acts as Jury Chairman, with other jury members including Seiji Ozawa, JoAnn Falletta and musicians from the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics.
At Zurich Opera this season, Luisi leads two new productions. In November he conducts Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, with Finnish soprano Karita Mattila making her house debut as Widow Begbick, and German soprano Annette Dasch in her role debut as Jenny. In the spring Luisi returns to the house to lead a new production of Verdi’s La forza del destino directed by Zurich Opera General Manager Andreas Homoki, whose many collaborations with the conductor have given them the reputation of being “almost a ‘dream team’” (Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen). Abkhazian-Russian soprano Hibla Gerzmava makes her house role debut as Leonora. In June Luisi also helms a reprise of last season’s production of Lehár’s Das Land des Lächelns.
The conductor also maintains a concert, touring and recording schedule with Philharmonia Zurich, Zurich Opera’s resident orchestra, and this season they perform two programs: the Dvořák Cello Concerto, featuring cellist Jan Vogler, along with Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony; and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, featuring Hélène Grimaud, along with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, a program that subsequently tours to four cities in Spain.
World-famous as an interpreter of the works of others in the realms of both opera and orchestral music, this fall Luisi presides over the first performances of his own first large-scale composition. In an event at which he will be recognized with an honorary doctorate, his Saint Bonaventure Mass receives its world premiere at New York’s St. Bonaventure University, followed two days later by its New York City premiere at the Met Cloisters Museum as part of the MetLiveArts series. The new mass, which will be performed by members of the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus under the direction of Catherine Matejka Bell, commemorates the 800th anniversary of the birth of Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, one of the most influential theologians of the Middle Ages.
Returning to the U.S. in the new year, Luisi conducts Beethoven piano concertos for return engagements with both the Philadelphia Orchestra and Dallas Symphony. Last season in Philadelphia Luisi conducted André Watts in Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the pianist’s first appearance with the orchestra, and this season he returns with frequent collaborator Lise de la Salle for Beethoven’s Third, together with Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 and Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. For his return to Dallas he reprises the Fourth Concerto, this time with soloist Yefim Bronfman, in a concert that also includes Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben.
Lise de la Salle joins Luisi again this season for a performance of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto with Florence’s Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the resident orchestra of Opera di Firenze, where Luisi has been named the new Music Director starting in the spring of 2018. Also on the program are the Strauss tone poems Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel, and a new work by Peter Eötvös titled Alle vittime senza nome, a memorial for refugees from Middle Eastern and African countries who have drowned in the Mediterranean. A second concert in Florence in the spring again features cellist Jan Vogler in the Dvořák Cello Concerto, along with Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.
In the midst of his many long-term engagements, Luisi also finds time this season for a production of Falstaff at Opera de Paris with Bryn Terfel; a new David Pountney production of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini at La Scala; and guest appearances with Beijing’s China NCPA Orchestra, where he leads two Beethoven symphonies in one concert, and the Czech Philharmonic, where he conducts Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony.
The 2016-17 season marked Luisi’s sixth and last as Principal Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. Typical of the consistently favorable press generated by that tenure was a Huffington Post review of a new Richard Eyre staging of Manon Lescaut, specially praising the music “which the magnificent Met Orchestra renders so beautifully under Fabio Luisi’s brilliant baton.” When he led a new Pierre Audi production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell in his final season, the production again garnered raves for the conductor. The Financial Times noted that he “conducted, as usual, with unflappable savoir-faire”; Vulture.com marveled at how Luisi “keeps it all in exquisite equilibrium”; the New York Times praised the “insight and adroit technique” with which he drew “fleetness, breadth and refinement from the excellent Met orchestra”; and the Wall Street Journal found that his “vivid, idiomatic conducting did the most to weld the long evening together.”
High-resolution photos can be downloaded here.
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Fabio Luisi: winter-spring 2017 engagements
Aug 31; Sep 1
Copenhagen, Denmark
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Mahler: Symphony No. 8
Sep 7, 8
Copenhagen, Denmark
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Henze: Violin Concerto No. 2, “Il Vitalino raddoppiato” (Julia Fischer, violin)
Nielsen: Symphony No. 5
Sep 17
Allegany, NY
Luisi: Saint Bonaventure Mass (world premiere)
Buffalo Philharmonic and Chorus / Catherine Matejka Bell
Sep 19
New York, NY
Met Live Arts
Luisi: Saint Bonaventure Mass (New York City premiere)
Buffalo Philharmonic and Chorus / Catherine Matejka Bell
Sep 24, 30
Beijing, China
China NCPA Orchestra
Schubert: Overture to Alfonso und Estrella, D. 732
Beethoven: Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92
Oct 26, 29; Nov 1, 4, 7, 10, 16
Paris, France
Opera de Paris (Opéra Bastille)
Verdi: Falstaff
Nov 5, 9, 12, 14, 17, 19, 22, 24
Zurich, Switzerland
Opernhaus Zurich
Weill: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny
Nov 12
Zurich, Switzerland
Philharmonia Zurich
Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104 (Jan Vogler, cello)
Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 in E-flat, “Romantic”
Dec 14, 15
Copenhagen, Denmark
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht
Strauss: Horn Concerto No. 1 (Lasse Mauritzen, horn)
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7
Dec 21
Copenhagen, Denmark
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Schmidt: Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln
Jan 14
Zurich, Switzerland
Philharmonia Zurich
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G, Op. 58 (Hélène Grimaud, piano)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
Spain Tour
Philharmonia Zurich
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G, Op. 58 (Hélène Grimaud, piano)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
Jan 16: Madrid, Spain
Jan 17: Valencia, Spain
Jan 18: Alicante, Spain
Jan 20: Oviedo, Spain
Jan 24-26
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Orchestra
Haydn: Symphony No. 104, “London”
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 (Yefim Bronfman, piano)
Wagner: Prelude and “Liebestod,” from Tristan und Isolde
Jan 31; Feb 1, 2
Prague, Czech Republic
Czech Philharmonic
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C minor
Feb 8
Florence, Italy
Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Péter Eötvös: Alle vittime senza nome
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Lise de la Salle, piano)
Strauss: Don Juan, Op. 20
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28
Feb 24
Florence, Italy
Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104 (Jan Vogler, cello)
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40
March 1, 2
Copenhagen, Denmark
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Wenjing: Rite of Mountains (Li Biao, percussion)
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5
March 8-11
Dallas, TX
Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 (Lise de la Salle, piano)
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben
April 15, 18, 21, 26, 29; May 2, 6, 10, 13
Milan, Italy
La Scala
Zandonai: Francesca da Rimini
April 20
Copenhagen, Denmark
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
May 27, 30; June 2, 7, 10, 13, 17, 20, 28
Zurich, Switzerland
Opernhaus Zurich
Verdi: La Forza del Destino
June 10, 16, 19, 22, 26, 29
Zurich, Switzerland
Opernhaus Zurich
Lehár: Das Land des Lächelns
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© 21C Media Group, August 2017