SOUNDS OF AMERICA
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P H O T O G R A P H Y
THE SCENE Ax brings French music to New York, Kavakos plays the Sibelius in Washington, Davis conducts Verdi in Toronto, and Charleston hosts more than 30 chamber music concerts as part of Spoleto Festival USA
NEW YORK, NY Lincoln Center Great Performers: Emanuel Ax (May 7); Europa Galante (May 10) The final two concerts in Lincoln Center’s season-long celebration of great performers look to the music of France and Italy respectively. Pianist Emanuel Ax presents a French recital, including Bizet’s Variations chromatiques, Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin, and Debussy’s Estampes, Hommage à Rameau and L’isle joyeuse. He concludes with Chopin’s dramatic Four Scherzos. The Italian periodinstrument ensemble Europa Galante — led by violinist/conductor Fabio Biondi — celebrate less-familiar composers from Milan (Monza, Sammartini, Scaccia and Brioschi) and early Mozart symphonies which reveal a strong Italian influence on the young composer. lincolncenter.org
WASHINGTON, DC National Symphony Orchestra Kavakos residency with Eschenbach (May 7-9, 11) Violinist Leonidas Kavakos begins a two-week residency at the Kennedy Center with a performance of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D minor. Christoph Eschenbach leads the National Symphony Orchestra in a programme that also includes Mahler’s Symphony No 5. Another highlight: Kavakos and Eschenbach perform an evening of music for piano and violin, with repertoire to be announced. kennedy-center.org
TORONTO, ON Toronto Symphony Orchestra Verdi Requiem (May 21-23) Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis celebrates his 40-year connection with the TSO with a performance of Verdi’s Requiem, a work often described as an opera in disguise. It features four stellar soloists: soprano Amber Wagner, mezzo Jamie Barton, tenor Frank Lopardo, and bass Eric Owens, with support from the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. tso.ca
CHARLESTON, SC Spoleto Festival USA (May 22 – June 7) The historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, hosts the Spoleto Festival USA, now in its 39th season. Theatres, churches and outdoor
MINNESOTA, MN Minnesota Orchestra American Voices: Light and Gold (May 8-10) Grammy-winning American conductor and composer Eric Whitacre is best known for his innovative and tech-savvy virtual choir projects. In May, he will present no fewer than four world premieres in collaboration with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Minnesota Chorale, following three performances last year. This year the focus is on contemporary American composers, and mixes choral and orchestral work, ranging from Aaron Copland’s 1941 Quiet City to Lux Aurumque, Whitacre’s own orchestral work for strings. This ‘rock star’ of the choral scene will also present a new large-scale work for choir and orchestra, Deep Field, which the composer/ conductor has been blogging about extensively on his own website. minnesotaorchestra.org
EVENT OF THE MONTH
Whitacre brings rock-star flamboyance to the podium in Minnesota spaces accommodate everything from opera and dance to chamber music and jazz by world-renowned artists. Highlights include the American premiere and first performances in more than 350 years of Francesco Cavalli’s Baroque opera Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona, starring mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux in the fiery title-role, along with New York Baroque Incorporated, a periodinstrument ensemble. A second opera — the world premiere of Paradise Interrupted by Huang Ruo — is conducted by John Kennedy, designed and directed by artist Jennifer Wen Ma (who worked on the Beijing Olympics), and features Chinese singer Qian Yi. Notable, too, is the chamber series of 33 concerts of 11 programmes. The 2015 line-up includes the St Lawrence String Quartet, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, baritone Tyler Duncan, flautist Tara Helen O’Connor, violinist Benjamin Beilman, and pianists Pedja Muzijevic and Inon Barnatan. Composer-in-Residence Mark Applebaum premieres a new work. spoletousa.org
ST LOUIS, MO Opera Theater of Saint Louis The Barber of Seville (May 23 – June 27) Rossini’s The Barber of Seville opens the festival season for the Opera Theater of
Saint Louis, which has a long tradition of discovering the next generation of talented opera artists. In this production the American mezzo Emily Fons is Rosina and bass-baritone Dale Travis her possessive guardian, Bartolo. In addition to traditional fare, the Opera Theater is known for programming lesser-known operas; looking ahead, it will offer the US premiere of Handel’s Richard the Lionheart and a new production of Tobias Picker’s tragic Emmeline. opera-stl.org
CHICAGO, IL Chicago Symphony Orchestra Beethoven and Clyne (May 28 – June 2) Chicago-native violinist Jennifer Koh and the CSO perform the world premiere of a new violin concerto, The Seamstress, a work by British composer Anna Clyne who is currently the orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence. Clyne creates genre-defying soundscapes with a mix of acoustic and electro-acoustic music. This is the third work the composer has written specifically for Koh. The programme opens with Berlioz’s overture, Les francs-juges, before concluding with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, under the baton of Ludovic Morlot. cso.org
Previews by Damian Fowler gramophone.co.uk
GRAMOPHONE APRIL 2015 VII
