LIVE MUSIC GUIDE 2022/23
Looking forward
There’s plenty for your diary as musicians prepare for special anniversaries and exciting new themes
UK
The Marian Consort
Little Missenden Church, Amersham, 9 October
Web: www.marianconsort.co.uk
Currently touring a subversive Tudor programme bookended by settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Tallis and Osbert Parsley, the Marian Consort includes Byrd’s pointed ‘Why do I use my paper, ink and pen?’. At the end of the month, music that inspired JS Bach comes under the spotlight.
Welsh National Opera
Venue Cymru, Llandudno, 15 October
Web: www.wno.org.uk
Mozart’s Die Zauberf löte (The Magic Flute) preaches ‘enlightenment’ next spring, and across autumn Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair holds court with Puccini’s La bohème. But autumn also revives Will Todd’s Migrations. A multilayered exploration ranging from the migration of birds to the fate of migrants down the centuries, it was premiered in the summer, and after Llandudno visits Plymouth, Birmingham and Southampton.
London Chamber Orchestra
St John’s Smith Square, London, 18 October
Web: www.lco.co.uk
As it embarks on its second century, the UK’s oldest professional chamber orchestra divides its favours between St John’s Smith Square and Cadogan Hall. And having opened the season with a fanfare by Dani Howard, her Saxophone Concerto is premiered by Jess Gillam next March. For October, conductor Hannah von Wiehler frames Lera Auerbach’s Sogno di Stabat Mater with Britten and Shostakovich.
Tenebrae
St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, 20 October
Web: www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org
The landmark Trafalgar Square church is now home to several resident ensembles including the Monteverdi Choir (who oblige in December with a seasonal account of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio). Visiting choirs include The Sixteen on Choral Pilgrimage, Polyphony, the BBC Singers and Tenebrae. Directed by Nigel Short, the latter return in January for the Rachmaninov Vespers; but in October they revisit a work written for them in 2005: Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles, a celebration of the pilgrims’ route to Santiago de Compostela.
Dover Quartet
John Innes Centre, Norwich, 23 October
Web: norwichchambermusic.org.uk
Chamber music is alive and well and living in Norwich! Every year, Norwich Chamber Music assembles a toothsome season, this year bounded by piano recitals from Stephen Hough and Tom Borrow. Guests include cellist Alban Gerhardt with Steven Osborne, baritone James Newby, who sings Mahler and Strauss, and in October the Dover Quartet makes bedfellows of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Schnittke’s Quartet No. 3.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Albert Hall, London, 23 October
Web: www.rpo.co.uk
Under the banner ‘Journeys of Discovery’, the RPO shares nine themed concerts between the Royal Albert Hall and the Southbank Centre. Discoveries don’t come much more supersized than Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ on 23 October, but en route to journey’s end next June, Vasily Petrenko also conducts the Second and Third symphonies, while Andrew Davis follows excerpts from Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Mahler’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth.
Sound Festival
Aberdeen & NE Scotland, 26-30 October
Web: www.sound-scotland.co.uk
With over 30 live performances, a clutch of world premieres, plus late-night ‘soundsessions’, Aberdeenshire’s shout-out for new music returns. After five years highlighting individual ‘endangered instruments’, all five are brought together in a concert of specially commissioned works by Daniel Kidane, Electra Perivolaris and Lisa Robertson.
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Barbican, London, 27-29 October
Web: www.barbican.org.uk
Sō Percussion with composer Caroline Shaw, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (see Live Highlights) and Les Arts Florissants all contribute to autumn’s edition of ‘Barbican Presents’. And across three concerts the Australian Chamber Orchestra and director Richard Tognetti underline their versatility with music ranging from Janáček to Jonny Greenwood and an eclectic accompaniment to a screening of Jennifer Peedom’s film River.
Hallé Orchestra
York Minster, 29 October
Web: www.halle.co.uk
The orchestra has a busy season at its Bridgewater Hall home, culminating next June in an Elgarian oratorio trilogy of The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles, and The Kingdom. There’s Elgar in December, too, when Steven Isserlis performs the Cello Concerto between Sibelius and Coleridge-Taylor. But the Hallé is a moveable feast and, after a performance in Manchester, conductor Mark Elder takes Verdi’s Requiem to York’s glorious Minster.
Brodsky Quartet
Kings Place, London, 29, 30 October
Web: www.kingsplace.co.uk
From The Tallis Scholars to Exaudi, Kings Place’s exhilarating Voices Unwrapped series continues apace. But other genres apply! Unlike the Emerson Quartet, who have split their complete Shostakovich quartet cycle at the Queen Elizabeth Hall into two, the indefatigable Brodskys are presenting the set over a single, concentrated weekend. Part of the Quartet’s ongoing 50th-anniversary celebrations, the seven concerts are swelled by talks and discussions.
Britten Weekend
Snape Maltings, 29, 30 October
Web: www.brittenpearsarts.org
The centrepiece of this year’s Britten Weekend is a staging by Oliver Mears of Britten’s chamber opera The Rape of Lucretia. It’s conducted by Corinna Niemeyer, and a related exhibition lends context. Malcolm Martineau, meanwhile, is at the piano for three recitals that track the complete song cycles in the company of singers including tenor Nicky Spence and mezzo Fleur Barron.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Younger Hall, St Andrews, 2 November
Web: www.sco.org.uk
Perhaps it’s a reaction to the excitement of autumn’s American tour, or to violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto’s March concert with US neo-folk singer Sam Amidon, but the orchestra ends its season in a decidedly thoughtful mood, contemplating Brahms’s German Requiem. Violinist Anthony Marwood, in the meantime, has been given carte blanche at the beginning of November and has convened an intriguing programme around Weill’s Violin Concerto that includes Ives and Bruckner, Elgar and Stravinsky.
Music in the Round
Upper Chapel, Sheffield, 4 November
Web: www.musicintheround.co.uk
Spreading its musical largesse around Sheffield (including the re-named Playhouse as well as the intimate Upper Chapel), Music in the Round invites the London Tango Quintet, pianist Llŷr Williams, and the Espen Eriksen Trio with saxophonist Andy Sheppard to join Ensemble 360 in f leshing out an ear-catching season. On 4 November, the ensemble is mindful of Vaughan Williams’s 150th anniversary, Ravel’s Sonatine spiking an otherwise all-Vaughan Williams programme including The Lark Ascending.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall and CBSO Centre, Birmingham, 6-11 November
Web: www.cbso.co.uk
In February, Sir Andrew Davis brings Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius ‘home’ to the city where it was premiered, and with festive Viennoiserie over, Mahler and the UK premiere of Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No. 3 usher in 2023. In November, however, four concerts including A Sea Symphony and a live accompanied screening of Scott of the Antarctic do their bit to mark Vaughan Williams’s anniversary.
Manchester Camerata
St George’s Bristol, 8 November
Web: www.manchestercamerata.co.uk
‘Mozart, Made in Manchester’ is only one facet of the Manchester Camerata’s increasingly eclectic music-making. ‘Joy Division Orchestrated’ does what it says on the tin, a collaboration with OperaUpClose weighs anchor on Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, and ‘Unquiet’ unites contemporary classical with electronics – music by Philip Glass and Mica Levi (composer of the film score Under the Skin) plus the premiere of a new work by Carmen Villain is featured in a tour which concludes in Bristol on 8 November.
Mozartfest
Bath, 11-19 November
Web: www.bathmozartfest.org.uk
It is opened by the Takács Quartet, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra give a grand finale with Brahms, Dvořák and pianist Stephen Hough. Fifteen concerts in all range from The Sixteen’s all-Purcell programme in Bath Abbey to the Nash Ensemble’s pairing of quintets by Mozart and Schubert. Others who are Bath-bound include pianist Simon Trpčeski, The Cardinall’s Musick and the Pavel Haas Quartet.
Royal Opera House
Linbury Theatre, London, 13-22 November
Web: www.roh.org.uk
Hotfooting it from Snape Maltings, Oliver Mears’s new production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia reaches the Linbury in November – hunkering down between main-stage performances of Handel’s Alcina and Puccini’s Tosca. January brings a revival of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, while in April Susanna Mälkki conducts the UK premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s new opera, Innocence.
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 17 November
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/now
The music of Charles Ives comes up for scrutiny this season, furnishing an American backdrop that makes space for John Adams’s Harmonielehre and even nods to the Disney centenary. Ligeti’s Violin Concerto with soloist Anthony Marwood and Haydn’s Nelson Mass further energise a mix that in November unites conductor Markus Stenz and Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Town Hall, Huddersfield, 23 November
Web: www.hcmf.co.uk
Philip Venables’s first major piano piece, Answer Machine Tape, 1987, receives its UK premiere at the hands (and technology) of Zubin Kanga. It’s part of a festival that welcomes Julia Holter’s Joan of Arc project to the Town Hall on 23 November, freshly recontextualising Dreyer’s 1928 movie. Holter and her band are joined by the Chorus of Opera North.
Dunedin Consort
Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, 19 November
Web: dunedin-consort.org.uk
Scotland’s leading early music ensemble, the Dunedin Consort regularly heads south of the border – and shares its new completion of Mozart’s unfinished Great Mass in C minor with Saffron Hall. In February Haydn symphonies are on the agenda, and in June Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s three Cantates Biblique receive their Scottish premiere.
IMS Prussia Cove
Wigmore Hall, London, 26, 27 November
Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
From Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s ‘Tour de Debussy’ to the start of a new Nash Ensemble series and another devoted to Busoni, it’s invigorating business-as-usual for a Wigmore Hall November. At the end of the month, however, a special weekend celebrates 50 years of the International Musicians Seminar founded in Cornwall by Sándor Végh. A who’s-who of musicians led by current artistic director cellist Steven Isserlis casts a wide net whose haul includes the world premiere of Thomas Adès’s Növények for mezzo and piano sextet. .
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Roman Rabinovich
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, 27 November
Web: www.rwcmd.ac.uk
The College launches the new academic year with a Whirlwinds Festival that embraces Boulez and Led Zeppelin. Its focus is wind instruments, but pianists aren’t forgotten for long. The Steinway International Piano Series resumes, and Roman Rabinovich is in bellicose mood as he opens his November recital with Byrd’s The Battell – followed by Couperin, George Walker, Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and his own 2020 Sonatina.
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Festival Hall, London, 18, 22, 28 January
Web: www.lpo.org.uk
A sense of ‘home’ is the thematic driver behind the LPO’s season, but it doesn’t mean that familiarity is de rigueur. January is freighted with premieres: following the UK first performance of the Clarinet Concerto by Kinan Azmeh, next comes Tan Dun on 22 January, who introduces his Buddha Passion; and finally, there’s a world premiere as Víkingur Ólafsson is the soloist in Mark Simpson’s new Piano Concerto.
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Hall, Belfast, 27 January
Web: www.ulsterorchestra.org.uk
The Ulster Orchestra opened its season with one of the grandest concertos of them all: Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2. And pianist Barry Douglas puts in an early appearance in 2023, performing a work he has long championed: Britten’s flamboyant Piano Concerto. Jac Van Steen, who conducts that concert (which contains another relative rarity, Sibelius’s Sixth Symphony), is evidently a Britten admirer, as he returns the following month to conduct the Violin Concerto with Dutch violinist Rosanne Philippens.
Opera North
Grand Theatre, Leeds, 4 February – 4 March
Web: www.operanorth.co.uk
Semi-staged opera in concert usually signals ‘end of season’ for Opera North (this year, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers). But a collaboration with Phoenix Dance Theatre affords a new perspective on Mozart’s Requiem too. In February, nestling between Puccini’s Tosca and Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, there’s David Pountney’s evergreen production of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Garry Walker conducts.
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 22 February
Web: www.rsno.org.uk
Music director Thomas Søndergård ends the season next June with a choral blockbuster: Verdi’s Requiem. And there’s another choral landmark in November, Britten’s War Requiem, again conducted by Søndergård (see Live Highlights, p114). In between, the orchestra’s assistant conductor Kellen Gray champions composers such as William Grant Still and George Walker in the concert ‘African American Voices’, John Wilson conducts Copland and Rachmaninov, and in February, Junping Qian is transported to the south by Richard Strauss’s Aus Italien.
Royal Northern Sinfonia
Sage Gateshead, 3 March
Web: www.sagegateshead.com
Nobody could accuse Dinis Sousa of musical conservatism. The principal conductor of the Royal Northern Sinfonia opened the season with Kurtág’s (The Answered Unanswered Question) and he closes with Martinů and Brahms’s ‘Clarinet Concerto’ (arranged by Berio from the first of the Op. 120 Clarinet Sonatas). In March he premieres a work specially commissioned from Kate Whitley set between Concert Românesc, Ligeti’s snapshot of rural Romania, and Sibelius’s incidental music to The Tempest.
Europe
Krystian Zimerman
KKL Luzern, Lucerne, 6 October
Web: www.sinfonieorchester.ch
The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra’s programme includes a head-turning piano festival that in 2023 welcomes among others Evgeny Kissin (who shares a platform with soprano Renée Fleming), Martha Argerich and Vikingur Ólafsson. By way of an October prelude, Krystian Zimerman and friends pair Brahms’s Piano Quartets Opp. 26 & 60.
Gulbenkian Orchestra
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, 6, 7 October
Web: www.gulbenkian.pt
The Xenakis centenary, Raphaël Pichon’s ensemble Pygmalion, and pianists including Mitsuko Uchida and Alexandre Kantorow are cheering on the orchestra’s 60th anniversary, which also features a Mahler focus and Messiaen’s La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ. October sees the Portuguese premiere of Thomas Adès’s Piano Concerto, coupled with Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Hannu Lintu conducts.
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Music Centre Concert Hall, Helsinki, 14 October
Web: helsinginkaupunginorkesteri.fi/en
The Helsinki Philharmonic, 140 years after its first concert, themes the season around Finland and its music. Almost 30 Finnish composers are represented, and outgoing chief conductor Susanna Mälkki bows out with Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. She also presides over a 70th birthday concert in October for Kaija Saariaho, whose Notes on Light and Verblendungen are framed by Sibelius and a new piece by Matthew Whittall.
Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Santa Cecilia Hall, Rome, 18, 20, 22 October
Web: www.santacecilia.it
Music director Antonio Pappano doesn’t just conduct this autumn; he also shares a piano stool with Beatrice Rana for Ravel as part of the chamber music strand. He opens the season with three October performances of Strauss’s Elektra. Ausrine Stundyte is the vengeful protagonist.
Komische Oper
Berlin, 22 October – 25 November
Web: www.komische-oper-berlin.de
Komische Oper might like to take an affectionate stroll on the lighter side with a hearty dose of operetta, but then there’s Nono’s Intolleranza 1960 and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman to punctuate a repertoire rich in Handel, Mozart and Dvořák. Barrie Kosky’s production of Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny lends a Brechtian perspective to October and November. Roland Kluttig conducts.
Netherlands Bach Society
De Nieuwe Kerk, The Hague, 30 October
Web: www.bachvereniging.nl
A hundred years ago last April, the fledgling Society introduced itself with a performance of JS Bach’s St Matthew Passion, and it’s been serving the composer royally ever since – not least in the trailblazing online ‘All of Bach’ project. Masato Suzuki conducts next year’s performances of the Passion; but in the meantime, Leonardo Garcia Alarcón leads a six-concert tour of Antonio Draghi’s oratorio Il dono della vita eterna.
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Concert House, Stockholm, 2-4 November
Web: www.konserthuset.se
With a composer festival devoted to Olga Neuwirth in November and Tobias Broström’s March/April Composer Weekend, the orchestra’s support for contemporary music complements a nod to the past as it celebrates Hugo Alfvén’s 150th birthday. At the start of November, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with soprano Dorothea Röschmann offset the vivacity of Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ Symphony in a concert conducted by Kristiina Poska.
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Alte Oper, Frankfurt, 7 November
Web: www.berliner-philharmoniker.de
The Berlin Phil is playing away, and not just in Frankfurt where Kirill Petrenko conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 – the work with which he opened the current season. The Seventh is the cornerstone of a US tour which includes New York, Boston and Chicago. Back in Berlin he bids farewell to 2022 in the company of tenor Jonas Kaufmann and a Russo-Italian programme pairing Verdi and Mascagni, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.
Irish National Opera
Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, 8-12 November
Web: www.irishnationalopera.ie
Next year, Irish National Opera brings experimental music theatre to the Royal Opera’s Linbury Theatre before indulging in the whipped cream of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. In November, however, it takes aim at Rossini’s operatic swansong: William Tell. Fergus Sheil conducts its first Dublin outing in nearly 150 years. The director is Julien Chavaz.
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, 9 November
Web: www.mahlerchamber.com
Over its 25-year history the Mahler Chamber Orchestra has crossed five continents, notching up concerts in over 40 countries. So there’s bound to be a celebratory spring in its well-travelled step this season. Between tours (directed by Leif Ove Andsnes and Mitsuko Uchida) majoring in Mozart, conductor Joana Mallwitz steers the November focus onto Schubert and Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.
Danish National Symphony Orchestra
DR Concert Hall, Copenhagen, 10, 12 November
Web: www.drkoncerthuset.dk
Schoenberg, Richard Strauss and Claude Vivier from soprano-conductor Barbara Hannigan plus a Nielsen symphony cycle are among 2023’s Danish delights. And Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducts two November performances of Mahler’s ultimately elegiac Symphony No. 9.
Iceland Symphony Orchestra
Harpa, Reykjavík, 17 November
Web: en.sinfonia.is
Jonathan Cohen conducts a special Advent programme. And Latvian violinist Baiba Skride joins Harriet Krijgh and Elspeth Moser for Gubaidulina’s Concerto for Violin, Cello and Bayan, in a concert conducted by Olari Elts that includes Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances and a work by Páll Ragnar.
Vienna State Opera
Staatsoper Vienna, 20 November – 20 December
Web: www.wiener-staatsoper.at
Hindemith’s Cardillac plus Calixto Bieito staging Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied and Kindertotenlieder are among Vienna’s more eye-catching productions this season. And in a fulsome Wagnerian offering, conducted by Philippe Jordan, Keith Warner’s new production of Die Meistersinger is unwrapped in December following November’s preview matinee.
Teatro Real
Teatro Real, Madrid, 20-24 November
Web: www.teatroreal.es
In a season straddling 500 years of repertoire, Spain’s operatic f lagship ranges from Purcell and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde to John Adams and Philip Glass’s Orphée. But Glass’s isn’t the only Orpheus in town. In November Leonardo Garcia Alarcón directs Vocalconsort Berlin and Freiburger Barockorchester in Monteverdi’s game-changing L’Orfeo.
Calidore Quartet
Rudolfinum, Prague, 21 November
Web: www.ceskafilharmonie.cz
Running in tandem with the Czech Philharmonic’s programme, the Chamber Music Society enters its 128th season with 28 concerts in prospect. Tenor Ian Bostridge sings Schubert’s Winterreise, Jaroslav Tůma traverses Bach’s Goldberg Variations and a distinguished crop of string quartets musters locals such as the Pavel Haas Quartet and visitors including the Emersons. First up, the Calidore Quartet is joined by pianist Ivo Kahánek for works by Wynton Marsalis, Smetana and Franck.
Orchestre de Paris
Philharmonie, Paris, 30 November, 1 December
Web: www.philharmoniedeparis.fr
Visiting international orchestras for 2022/23 include the Czech Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra. But the Orchestre de Paris remains at the heart of the Philharmonie’s symphonic regime. The young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä presides over Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony at the end of November and prefaces it with a new work by Betsy Jolas. On 2 December he takes up his cello to pursue a synaesthetic approach to JS Bach with perfumer Francis Kurkdjian.
La Scala
Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 4-29 December
Web: www.teatrolascala.org
Riccardo Chailly launches his ninth season as music director this December with Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1869 version), staged by Kasper Holten with Ildar Abdrazakov as the hapless tsar. Next April, Chailly will conduct Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor; meanwhile Leonardo Vinci’s comedy Li zite ‘ngalera unfurls a flag for the Italian Baroque.
Les Arts Florissants
Royal Chapel, Versailles, 16 December
Web: www.arts-florissants.org
William Christie’s early music ensemble was named after a Charpentier opera, and as the festive season approaches, they decamp to Versailles for Christmas music by Charpentier including a selection of instrumental Noëls and a large-scale motet for Christmas Day. At the start of December, they collaborate in a tribute to Betsy Jolas, while Gluck, Haydn and more Charpentier is in store for 2023.
La Monnaie
La Monnaie, Brussels, 19 December
Web: www.lamonnaie.be
Saint-Saëns’s Henry VIII and a hybrid portrait of Elizabeth I drawing on Donizetti’s ‘Tudor’ operas piques curiosity in La Monnaie’s adventurous season. But there’s not just opera. In a packed concert programme, Antonio Pappano conducts the orchestra in Hans Zender’s reimagining of Schubert’s Winterreise, with tenor Ian Bostridge.
La Fenice
San Marco, Venice, 20, 21 December
Web: www.teatrolafenice.it
Venice’s intimate jewel-box of a theatre doesn’t just stage operas – Maderna’s Satyricon and Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso this season – the orchestra (and chorus) also fuel an extensive concert series. This Christmas they get some time off, as Cappella Marciana performs Merulo’s Messa di Natale in the Basilica where it was first heard on Christmas Day 1582.
Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra
Auditorium Rainier III, Monaco, 21 January
Web: www.opmc.mc
With a mini-festival devoted to Mozart, and an October-to-May parade of pianists including Elisabeth Leonskaja, Piotr Anderszewski and Grigory Sokolov, the principality is awash with music. Mozart à Monaco isn’t January’s only highlight, however. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 in the completion by Deryck Cooke.
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Isarphilharmonie, Munich, 3, 5 February
Web: www.br-so.com
Kirill Petrenko, Zubin Mehta and Iván Fisher are among the conductors appearing this season, but in February it’s the turn of chief conductor designate Simon Rattle who leads an all-star cast in concert performances of Wagner’s Siegfried – repeated in Hamburg and Luxembourg.
USA & Canada
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, 6-9 October
Web: www.laphil.com
Whether nurturing the Pan-American Music Initiative or conducting four concert performances of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, music director Gustavo Dudamel is all over a season that celebrates John Adams’s 75th birthday and, in February, Rachmaninov’s complete piano concertos. There’s Mahler in triplicate, launched in October by Dudamel, who pairs Symphony No. 1 with Gabriela Ortiz’s new violin concerto.
Apollo’s Fire
Shaker Heights, Akron, Bay Village, 8-15 October
Web: www.apollosfire.org
Thirtieth anniversary celebrations done and dusted, Jeanette Sorrell’s period instrument group promises ‘sparks of joy in a fragmented world’. There should be sparks aplenty in the first Ohio offering: Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. A ‘Baroque Bistro’ ushers in the new year, ‘Exiles’ tackles the Jewish and African diasporas, and in May, Bach beckons.
New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall, New York, 12-18 October
Web: www.nyphil.org
There’s not just a new season in prospect but a new home too as the New York Phil repossesses the refurbished David Geffen Hall. In the opening concerts music director Jaap van Zweden premieres a work for light, electronics and orchestra by Marcos Balter alongside music by John Adams, Tania León and Respighi.
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle, 15-29 October
Web: www.seattleopera.org
From sparkling Donizetti to the premiere of Sheila Silver’s opera based on Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, laughter and tears are woven into Seattle’s operatic fare. October is given over to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in a new production by Marcelo Lombardero. Stefan Vinke and Mary Elizabeth Williams are the ill-fated pair.
San Francisco Opera
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, 15-30 October
Web: www.sfopera.com
There are 100th birthday candles to be blown out this season –and the September world premiere of John Adams’s Anthony & Cleopatra ensured an auspicious curtain-up. Sixty-five years after giving the US premiere of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites there’s a new production by Olivier Py starring Heidi Stober and conducted by Eun Sun Kim.
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Boston, 20-22 October
Web: www.bso.org
The orchestra’s ongoing Shostakovich cycle includes three symphonies and the piano concertos with Yuja Wang, and a ‘Voices of Loss, Reckoning and Hope’ festival addresses social justice. Among October’s highlights, Andris Nelsons conducts two performances of Mahler’s protean Symphony No. 6.
Juilliard String Quartet
Leo Rich Theater, Tucson, 26,27 October
Web: www.arizonachambermusic.org
What with the Juilliards, the Takács and Cuarteto Casals included in the series line-up, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music has a penchant for the string quartet medium. Celebrating their 75th anniversary, the Juilliards propose two programmes. The first enfolds works by Jörg Widmann within Beethoven’s Op. 130 and Grosse Fuge, the second bookends Eleanor Alberga’s Quartet No. 2 with Beethoven and Dvořák.
Sarasota Opera
Opera House, Sarasota, 28 October-12 November
Web: www.sarasotaopera.org
There are wedding bells in Sarasota, but not everything is as it seems. Cimarosa’s bubbly comic opera Il matrimonio segreto says ‘I do’ in a new production by singerturned director Stephanie Sundine and conducted by Sarasota’s artistic director Victor DeRenzi, who also spearheads 2023’s stagings of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly and Verdi’s Ernani.
Tafelmusik
Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, Toronto, 28,29 October
Web: www.tafelmusik.org
For the second concert of the series, the Canadian period instrument ensemble slips the gears from a wind quintet by Reicha, through the young Mendelssohn’s ebullient String Octet, to Farrenc’s E flat Nonet. Highlights in 2023 include Bach’s St John Passion and dives into Rebel, Leclair and Rameau.
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera House, Chicago, 9-25 November
Web: www.lyricopera.org
Having opened the season with Ernani there’s more Verdi in store: November alights on David McVicar’s five-act original version of Don Carlos, conducted by Enrique Mazzola. In February The Factotum reimagines Rossini’s demon barber through hip hop, while ‘Proximity’ musters a trilogy of premieres.
National Symphony Orchestra
Kennedy Center, Washington, 10-12 November
Web: www.kennedy-center.org
There’s a ‘Symphonic Surprise’ at the beginning of November, and later a pairing of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. In between, Anne Akiko Meyers gives the world premiere of Michael Daugherty’s violin concerto Blue Electra. Conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, there’s Barber, Wagner and Debussy, too.
Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, 16 November
Web: www.tso.ca
The Canadian orchestra celebrates its centenary across a season that includes cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Yuja Wang as featured artists. In November, Yo-Yo Ma joins a gala celebration that concludes with Dvořák’s Cello Concerto.
Cleveland Orchestra
Mandel Concert Hall, Severance Music Center, Cleveland, 17-19 November
Web: www.clevelandorchestra.com
Christmas is coming early this year. John Adams conducts El Niño, his textually eclectic nativity oratorio this November. And with Christmas a distant memory, Thomas Adès conducts music from his The Tempest in March. Music director Franz Welser-Möst also spearheads two November concert performances of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West.
San Diego Symphony Orchestra
The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, San Diego, 12,13 November
Web: www.sandiegosymphony.org
Including Marc-André Hamelin, Garrick Ohlsson and Ingrid Fliter, San Diego doesn’t just have a clutch of distinguished pianists to look forward to – next year the orchestra returns to its much-enhanced Jacobs Music Center home. Emanuel Ax also plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in a November concert conducted by Rafael Payare alongside Shostakovich’s Symphony ‘The Year 1917’.
Opéra de Montréal
Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Montréal, 18-26 March
Web: www.operademontreal.com
Italy has the first and last word in a lineup bound by Verdi and Puccini. And in March, Ainadamar, Osvaldo Golijov’s homage to Lorca, probes the writer’s life against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. To November falls La beauté du monde by Michel Marc Bouchard and Julien Bilodeau, set in war-torn Paris.
Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York, 22 November – 15 December
Web: www.metopera.org
From Aida to Die Zauberf löte, the Met fields an operatic A-Z including three premieres and seven new productions, among them Terence Blanchard’s swerve into the word of boxing: Champion. In November is the world premiere of Kevin Puts’s The Hours. Uniting Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and Kelli O’Hara, it’s directed by Phelim McDermott. Yannick Nézet-Seguin conducts.
Emerson Quartet
Playhouse, Vancouver, 4 December
Web: www.friendsofchambermusic.ca
The Vancouver-based Friends of Chamber Music mine a rich seam of string quartet repertoire this season. Ensembles include Quartetto di Cremona, the Juilliard and Takács Quartets, and, before it disbands later next year, the Emerson Quartet is joined in December by founding cellist Eric Wilson for Schubert’s Quintet D956.
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Maison symphonique, Montréal, 7, 10, 11 December
Web: www.osm.ca
Rafael Payare’s first full season as music director underscores his ambition with performances of Mahler’s Symphonies Nos 2, 3 and 5. Elsewhere, he’s joined by intrepid soprano Barbara Hannigan in a programme pairing Berlioz and Sibelius with Nono and Vivier’s love song of solitude: Lonely Child.
Philadelphia Orchestra
Verizon Hall, Philadelphia, 13,14 January
Web: www.philorch.org
Fresh from a summer’s European tour and an opening night to the season featuring Lang Lang and BalletX, the orchestra rolls up its January sleeves for a meaty programme setting Sibelius’s Violin Concerto between John Adams’s Dr Atomic Symphony and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé Suite No. 2. Roderick Cox is the conductor; Augustin Hadelich, the soloist.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Winter Festival
Alice Tully Hall, New York, 22 January-12 February
Web: www.chambermusicsociety.org
This year’s festival is a Schubertiade writ large across four concerts exploring the songs and chamber music. A fifth tracks Schubert’s inf luence on composers as diverse as Liszt, Mahler, Korngold, Previn and John Harbison.
Rest of the World
New Zealand Opera
Mayfair Theatre, Dunedin, New Zealand, 12, 13 October
Web: www.nzopera.com
Given its world premiere last May, Kenneth Young’s The Strangest of Angels gets a second outing in October as part of the Dunedin Arts Festival. But it’s not the only new work in New Zealand Opera’s armoury this season. December brings Ihitai ‘Avei’a – Star Navigator by Tim Finn (of Crowded House fame). Verdi’s Macbeth, meanwhile, stalks Wellington and Christchurch; and on 27 October Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja gives a recital in Auckland.
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
The Lowy Concert Hall, Tel Aviv, Israel, 10-15 October
Web: www.ipo.co.il
Pianists Martha Argerich and András Schiff plus violinists Vilde Frang and Gil Shaham are among the high-profile soloists as the Israel Philharmonic’s 86th season spices things up with Ravel’s opera L’heure espagnole and part of Penderecki’s Paradise Lost. To set the ball rolling on 10 October, Lahav Shani conducts Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 alongside works by Arvo Pärt and Sibelius.
Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
Cultural Centre Concert Hall, Hong Kong, 21, 22 October
Web: www.hkphil.org
From chamber music to Cantonese opera and a collaboration with Opera Hong Kong on Verdi’s La Traviata, the the Hong Kong Philharmonic likes to ring the changes, and finally gets to welcome back music director Jaap van Zweden. Conductor Lio Kuokman, however, is at the helm for October’s ascent of Strauss’s majestic Alpine Symphony – with Korngold’s Violin Concerto as Strauss’s climbing companion.
Opera Australia
Sydney Opera House, Australia, 29 October – 5 November
Web: www.opera.org.au
Puccini’s Madam Butterfly is the spectacular al fresco production on Sydney Harbour next March-April, and Bizet’s Carmen struts her stuff on Cockatoo Island. Over October and November, meanwhile, Andrea Battistoni conducts Verdi‘s epic Attila. Directed by Davide Livermore, in a co-production with La Scala Milan, it features Ukrainian bass Taras Berezhansky in the title role.
Europa Galante
Sapporo Concert Hall, Sapporo, Japan, 2 November
Web: www.kitara-sapporo.or.jp
Sapporo’s state-of-the-art venue, called by Simon Rattle ‘the best modern concert hall in the world’, celebrates its 25th anniversary. The resident Sapporo Symphony Orchestra plays Beethoven’s Ninth in December. An October recital by pianist András Schiff includes Mozart and Schubert, while Fabio Biondi’s Europa Galante prefaces Vivaldi with Corelli, Geminiani and Locatelli.
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore, 7, 8 December
Web: www.sso.org.sg
Hans Graf, now the SSO’s music director, in October enlists Alexei Volodin for Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds plus the Capriccio. December finds Krystian Zimerman multi-tasking across two Beethoven ‘4s’ – directing Piano Concerto No. 4 from the keyboard before conducting Symphony No. 4.
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra
Jaguar Shanghai Symphony Hall, China, 24, 25 December
Web: www.shsymphony.com
China’s oldest symphony orchestra welcomes soprano Guanqun Yu as artist-in-residence in a season that marshals three world premieres and a Wagnerian finale. Joined by soloists including violinist Ning Feng and pianist Haochen Zhang, music director Long Yu presides over eleven concerts, among them Bizet’s Carmen in January and two December performances of Verdi’s Requiem.