“Eight world premieres, a winter festival devoted to French music, and a rousing season finale with Puccini’s ‘Turandot’ will be among the standouts in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s 2017-2018 classical season,” writes Michael Hodges in Monday’s (1/30) Detroit News. “This will also be Leonard Slatkin’s 10th and last season as full-time music director.…The French Festival will dovetail nicely with DSO history, [Slatkin] noted, since ‘French music is what the orchestra made its early reputation on,’ under the great French-born music director Paul Paray, from 1951-1962. [In addition to] a rare all Saint-Saëns program … the festival will also feature a newly edited version of Gershwin’s ‘An American in Paris’ [and] Offenbach’s ‘Gaîté Parisienne’ [with] actual can-can dancers on stage.” Eight premieres by young American composers are planned: Conor Brown, Steven Bryant, Britta Byström, Joshua Cerdenia, Chris Cerrone, Roshanne Etezady, Loren Loiacono, and Jared Miller. For Puccini’s Turandot in June 2018 with Michigan Opera Theatre, “We’ll have the stage as full as possible with as many people as I can cram on there,” says Slatkin. Guest conductors will include Fabien Gabel, James Gaffigan, Giancarlo Guerrero, Hannu Lintu, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, John Storgårds, Juraj Valčuha, Mark Wigglesworth, Joseph Young, and Nikolaj Znaider,
Posted February 1, 2017
