“Since becoming music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007, Marin Alsop has typically devised a theme of some kind to unify each season. For 2014-2015, the theme is ‘spirituality and transcendence,’ ” writes Tim Smith in Wednesday’s (3/5) Baltimore Sun. The new season was announced at a press event at Meyerhoff Hall during a rehearsal at which the orchestra performed selections from the coming season. “Fitting that theme will be such works as Mahler’s Symphony No 3, with its last movement ‘pointing the way to God,’ as the composer put it; and Symphony No. 4, which ends with a song evoking a child’s view of heaven.… Other pieces with a spiritual element include Alexander Scriabin’s ‘Poem of Ecstasy’ … [paired] with Christopher Rouse’s ‘Rapture,’ which the composer says addresses ‘spiritual bliss, religious or otherwise.’ … The annual BSO gala in September … will feature Center Stage artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah as narrator in Copland’s ‘A Lincoln Portrait’ and the Morgan State University Choir in that composer’s ‘Old American Songs.’ ” Also planned in 2014-15 are a new Sunday matinee series at Strathmore and a semi-staged production of Bernstein’s Candide, starring Patti Lupone.
Posted March 7, 2014
Pictured: Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Chris Lee
