21C Media Group’s
2014 Summer Highlights Preview
June 11 – 28: New York Philharmonic Music Director ALAN GILBERT and Artist-in-Residence Yefim Bronfman conclude the Philharmonic’s season with the Beethoven Piano Concertos: A Philharmonic Festival. Over the course of the three-week festival, Bronfman performs the complete piano concerto cycle, as well as the Triple Concerto with Philharmonic Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and Principal Cello Carter Brey. The festival also features the world premieres of works by Anthony Cheung and Sean Shepherd, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic as part of the Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music.
June 12 – 15: JEREMY DENK is the music director of the 68th season of the Ojai Music Festival. One highlight of the festival will be the world premiere of a new opera, The Classical Style, that was co-commissioned by the Ojai Festival, Cal Performances at Berkeley, Carnegie Hall and the Aspen Music Festival, with music by STEVEN STUCKY and a libretto by Denk himself (Denk describes it as “a love letter to Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven … A satire of classical pomp”). In residence at Ojai will be the New York-based orchestra collective THE KNIGHTS, which will perform in the semi-staged production of The Classical Style; the first half of that concert will present the string quartet BROOKLYN RIDER performing Haydn’s String Quartet in G minor, Op. 74, No. 3 (“Rider”). Other festival highlights will be performances by jazz composer and musical thinker Uri Caine, and a cycle of Ives’s four violin sonatas pairing Denk with violinist Stefan Jackiw. Denk is also Music Director of the fourth Ojai North! festival that follows, from June 16-21. [Ojai, CA]
June 13 – 29: After a season-long sabbatical, PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD returns to the Aldeburgh Festival for his sixth season as Artistic Director. As well as performing music by composers with whom he is particularly associated, including Messiaen, he will undertake a major project examining Ligeti’s Études, which Aimard premiered and has long championed. A series of masterclasses on the Études will be filmed for inclusion in a planned new online resource in partnership with Klavier-Festival Ruhr. Aimard’s other appearances at Aldeburgh include a recital of French music for two pianos with Tamara Stefanovich, with whom he will also perform Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major, K365 with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He will play chamber works by Janácek with members of the orchestra, and the UK premiere of Tristan Murail’s Le Désenchantement du monde with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
June 16 – Aug 9: The MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST’s 2014 Summer School and Festival will take place from June 16 to August 9. Highlights include a fully staged production of Carmen, presented as an 80th birthday tribute to Marilyn Horne – a Music Academy alumna (’53) and Director of the Voice Program since 1997 – as well as performances and masterclasses by the new music sextet eighth blackbird, DEBORAH VOIGT, Jonathan Biss, JEREMY DENK, DANIEL HOPE, JOSHUA ROMAN, and the Takács Quartet. Retiring New York Philharmonic Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, a Music Academy guest artist since 1992, joins the festival’s faculty. Featuring the Academy’s exceptionally talented fellows, together with illustrious guest performers and faculty, the events will be presented at the Academy’s scenic Miraflores campus and in venues throughout Santa Barbara.
June 25: MICHAEL HERSCH’s first opera, On the Threshold of Winter, will receive its world premiere on June 25 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Hersch’s two-act opera, marking his long-awaited debut for the stage, is based on “The Bridge”, the harrowing final work of Romanian author, poet and painter Marin Sorescu, who wrote it in Paris in 1996 during the last days of his life. The opera features soprano Ah Young Hong and will be conducted by Tito Muñoz, who was recently appointed as Music Director of the Phoenix Symphony.
June 27, July 1: Fans won’t have to wait any longer to see ANNA NETREBKO making her role debut as Lady Macbeth opposite baritone Simon Keenlyside in the title role of the Verdi masterwork. The all-star cast for this production at the Munich Opera Festival is rounded out by JOSEPH CALLEJA as Macduff and ILDAR ABDRAZAKOV as Banquo. [Munich, Germany]
June 27 – Aug 17: The roots of Austro-German Romanticism will be explored at the 2014 annual BARD SUMMERSCAPE festival, which once again offers a summer of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, keyed to the theme of the 25th anniversary season of the world-renowned BARD MUSIC FESTIVAL: Schubert and His World. Held in the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s Hudson River campus, the seven-week SummerScape festival opens with the first of three performances of Proscenium Works: 1979–2011 by the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and closes with the conclusion of the Bard Music Festival. Complementing BMF’s Schubert exploration, some of the great Viennese composer’s most important contemporaries provide key SummerScape highlights. These include the first American revival in 100 years of Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Euryanthe, as well as a single semi-staged performance of Schubert’s rarely performed opera Fierrebras; the world premiere theater production of Love in the Wars, an adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea by the Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville; and a film series titled “Schubert and the Long 19th Century.” Since its founding in 1990, the Bard Music Festival – described as “part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit” by the New York Times – has done much to revitalize the classical concert experience.
July 5: As part of “Opera At The Ballpark,” San Francisco Opera presents a live broadcast of Verdi’s La traviata at AT&T Park. This will be the first performance in this production with husband and wife STEPHEN COSTELLO (“an ascending voice in opera,” Philadelphia Inquirer) and AILYN PÉREZ (“an unalloyed triumph” as Violetta, The Guardian)leading the cast. Additional dates featuring the couple in this San Francisco Opera production are July 8, 11 and 13. [San Francisco, CA]
July 12, 18: Caramoor’s celebrated Bel Canto series, led by Will Crutchfield, opens its 18th season with ANGELA MEADEreturning to Caramoor to make her role debut in the title role of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia. [Katonah, NY]
July 20 – Aug 4: GIL SHAHAM joins the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America for an eight-city North American tour. As part of his ongoing exploration of the Violin Concertos of the 1930s, the American master violinist plays Britten’s concerto on the tour, which begins with a performance at the Performing Arts Center in Purchase, NY (July 20), followed by the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut in New York City (July 22). It continues with appearances at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, MA (July 24), Appalachian Summer Festival in Boone, NC (July 26), Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago, IL (July 28), Grand Teton Music Festival in Teton Village, WY (July 30), and Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, CA (August 2), before culminating with a performance at Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall (August 4).
July 28 – Aug 14: MARC-ANDRÉ DALBAVIEwill conduct the world premiere performances of his new opera, Charlotte Salomon, at the Salzburg Festival, by which it was commissioned. In the title role, Luc Bondy’s production stars German film actress Johanna Wokalek, winner of multiple “Best Actress” awards, as the young Jewish artist whose life and work provided Dalbavie with his inspiration. Charlotte Salomon fled Nazi Germany for France, where she created a series of paintings entitled Life? Or Theatre? before her arrest and subsequent death in Auschwitz. She incorporated both text and music into her semi-autobiographical art, and in Charlotte Salomon, Dalbavie’s music becomes a medium through which the creative vision of its eponymous heroine is channeled. [Salzburg, Austria] http://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/Default.aspx?tabid=229&programid=4906&language=en-US&urlentityId=4906&ignoreUrlMaster=true
Aug 23 – 28: The ninth season of the Stillwater Music Festival, a weeklong festival founded and led by BROOKLYN RIDER in Stillwater, Minnesota, offers a platform for the quartet – three of whose members have Minnesota roots – to work with old friends and new partners in a familiar setting. Events take place in the Stillwater area, with the Washington County Historic Courthouse serving as the principal concert venue.
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© 21C Media Group, March 2014
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