Thursday 4 February 2016

Napoleon, Oedipus and Virtual Reality - the Philharmonia Orchestra's 2016/17 season

Philharmonia Orchestra new season
Virtual Reality comes to the Royal Festival Hall as the opening weekend of the Philharmonia Orchestra's 2016/17 season will see the orchestra presented in virtual reality to viewers outside the concert hall whilst the orchestra plays live inside. Elsewhere in the season there Stravinsky staged by Peter Sellars, Tansy Davies's new Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra and the return of Abel Gance's Napoleon played live with Carl Davis's score.

For the opening weekend of the 2016/17 season, principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the orchestra will be performing the third movement of Sibelius's Third Symphony on stage whilst viewers will be able to experience a 360° 3D video & audio performance via Virtual Reality headsets, available to view for free in the foyer spaces. Another hi-tech innovation, the orchestra's award-winning walk-through installation of Holst's The Planets, Universe of Sound, will come to the Clore Ballroom Floor in the Royal Festival Hall for two weeks (see my review of it at the Science Museum).
Esa-Pekka Salonon will be conducting the final concerts of the orchestra's Stravinsky: Myths & Rituals festival including Oedipus rex and Symphony of Psalms, directed by Peter Sellars. And all five concerts will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Salonen returns in spring 2017 with Pierre-Laurent Aimard for Inspirations, four concerts with works for piano and orchestra by Ligeti, Beethoven, Debussy and Bartók, alongside music by Mahler, Strauss, Ravel, Boulez. Tansy Davies's Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra will receive its London premiere performed by members of the orchestra's horn section. The work was commissioned by Esa-Pekka Salonen for the Philharmonia Orchestra’s 70th anniversary.

Christoph von Dohnányi, who is the Philharmonia’s Honorary Conductor for Life, conducts Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with soloists Robert Dean Smith and Matthias Goerne, Paavo Järvi completes his Nielsen cycle, whilst Vladimir Ashkenazy completes his Rachmaninov Project with Rachmaninov’s First Symphony and Edward Gardner conducts Verdi's Requiem. 

The orchestra returns to the movies, with Napoleon: Live Cinema performing Carl Davis's score with the 1927 silent epic, to coincide with the release of the digitally restored version of the film on DVD from the BFI National Archive. 

The Orchestra will perform 11 free pre-concert performances at Royal Festival Hall: Music of Today, curated by composer Unsuk Chin, and the second full season of chamber music recitals, programmed and performed by members of the Orchestra.

Full information from the Philharmonia Orchestra's website.

Elsewhere on this blog:

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