Wednesday 7 August 2013

Philharmonia 2013/14

Philharmonia Orchestra - 2013/14 season
The Philharmonia Orchestra's 2013/14 opens with the first blast of their three year Berlioz project, a trio of concerts of Czeck music, a celebration of Richard Strauss's 150th anniversary, the return of Abel Gance's Napoleon and Thomas Ades Violin Concerto, plus a wealth of other goodies.

The Philharmonia's Berlioz projects starts with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted La Damnation de Faust (26/9) and the Symphonie fantastique (29/9), with a terrific cast including Paul Groves, Gerald Finley and Christianne Stotijn. Later on we are promised Romeo et Juliette, and the Grande Messe de morts.

Salonon will also be conducting the orchestra in the premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Maan varjot (Earth's shadows), a new work for organ and orchestra which will help celebrate the newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall organ with Olivier Latry (the titulaire of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris) as the organ soloist. (26/6/2014). And Salonen closes the season with Mahler's Eighth Symphony, (29/6/2014).

Andris Nelsons will be conducting a cycle of Brahms' symphonies and concertos, which will include Christian Tezlaff playing the Violin Concerto and joining with his sister Tanja Tezlaff for the Double Concerto. Brahms's Requiem concludes the cycle, with soloists Annette Dasch and James Rutherford.

The young Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa has a series of concerts devoted to music of his homeland, with a rare performance of Joseph Suk's Asrael Symphony plus the Dvorak Cello Concerto with Truls Mork (15/5/2014), Janaceck's Glagolitic Mass with Thomas Trotter playing the organ (13/4/2014), Janaceck's Sinfonietta plus Dvorak's Violin Concerto and Suk's Praga (13/4),  plus chamber music performances including Janaceck's Diary of One Who Disappeared.

The orchestra is marking the 150th anniversary of the death of Richard Strauss in 2014 with a number of performances including the Four Last Songs (5/6/2014) conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi and the closing scene from Salome conducted by Philippe Jordan. (30/3/2014) and a pair of concerts conducted by Loren Maazel (20, 23/3/2014).

Abel Gance's epic silent film Napoleon which lasts over 6 hours is being screen on 30 November 2014, with the Philharmonia being conducted by Carl Davis in his live score to the film. An event not to be missed.

On the lighter operatic side, John Wilson will be conducting a concert performance of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus (27/4/2014)

Nicholas Collon conducts an all British programme which includes Britten's Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, RVW's Symphony no. 6 and Thomas Ades' Violin Concerto. (6/2/2014)

Other conductors include Paavo Jarvi in an all Russian programme (12/6/2014), Edward Gardner in Berlioz, Wagner and Elgar (3/4/2014), Vladimir Ashkenazy in a series of concerts including Prokofiev's Ivan the Terrible and Gustavo Dudamel conducting Mahler's Seventh Symphony (14/11/2013).

In the orchestra's Music of Today series, which is Unsuk Chin’s third season as Artistic Director of Music of Today, six eclectic musical composer-portraits are featured. These concerts are  performed as free pre-concert chamber events ahead of Philharmonia main evening concerts. Featured artists in 2013/14 are Christophe Bertrand, Chris Paul Harman, Jonathan Harvey, Benedict Mason and Karin Rehnqvist. The series is completed by the annual Young Composers Academy event, supported by the Royal Philharmonic Society, in which three young musicians are invited to spend a year working alongside Unsuk Chin and Philharmonia musicians to compose new works for performance in concert.

Further information from the Philharmonia website.

Elsewhere on this blog:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular Posts this month